Recent mergers and acquisitions that took place in the pharmaceutical sector in India and abroad are creating distress among the trade unions for pharma sales professionals in the country. The Federation of Medical Representatives Association of India (FMRAI), national union of pharma sales reps, is planning to launch a series of agitations against the growing violations of labour laws in this industry after the mergers and acquisitions.

The Federation is launching a national level strike of medical representatives on August 17 and 18, 2010, and has plans to organize a march to the Parliament, probably by the third week of September, seeking strict implementation of the Sales Promotion Employees (SPE) Act, 1976.

The multinationals have resorted to their 'hire-fire policy' in India after these mergers and are trying to violate the labour laws, especially the SPE Act, creating a major worry among the sales personnels, alleges a senior member with FMRAI from Maharashtra. Some of the companies are not even adhering to the basic labour laws and has been changing the nomenclature of the SPEs or the medical representatives to dodge the SPE Act.

The government is indirectly supporting such actions by not enforcing the provisions provided under the law. Though many states have designated an official from the state labour department as inspector to monitor implementation of labour laws under the Act, the system is almost not operational since as no proper inspections are carried out regularly. Further, the inspection details are also not revealed to the association even after requesting for inspection reports through Right To Information (RTI) Act, he said.

Repeated demands from the federation to the government to enforce the rules went unheeded and the situation is getting out of hand, says the FMRAI leaders. The federation has finalised its plans for agitation and is in the process of serving notices to the pharma companies about the two-day national level strike.

As Pharmabiz reported earlier, the medical representatives of Wyeth in Tamil Nadu under the Tamil Nadu Medical & Sales Representatives Association (TNMSRA), an affiliate to the federation, has gone on a day's strike against the alleged move of Pfizer India to change the nomenclature of sales representatives to professional service officers (PSO) after the merger of Wyeth with Pfizer. The federation avers that the change in nomenclature would result in exclusion of the employees from the labour rights offered under the SPE Act.

The sales employees of Fulford (India) Ltd are also facing similar issues with the management after Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD) merged the former as its subsidiary, making the federation apprehensive about the future of employees in firms involved in such deals of late, alleges FMRAI.