The Federation of Medical Representatives Association of India (FMRAI) has urged the central government to include sales promotion as an industry in the Industrial Disputes Act. The association will submit a memorandum to the central government in this regard soon.

To press their demand, the FMRAI is planning to hold a Dharna in front of Parliament on September 17 during the monsoon session of Parliament. They will be asking the government to term sales promotion as an industry by amending section 2J of the Industrial Disputes Act.

The FMRAI has decided to press this issue with the government because the job of the sales promotion employees was uncategorized and they are being blamed even for a drop in medicine sale of the respective companies. Some companies were even going to the extent of dismissing the medical representatives for drop in sales.

By making sales promotion as an industry, the job of a sales representative can be categorized and it would not be easy for the management for penalizing the sales representatives for reasons not connected with his allotted job. Besides, the nature of work of the medical representatives can also be clearly defined.

Industry means any systematic activity carried out with co-operation between an employer and the workmen and it is how the Industrial Disputes Act is defines industry. But as of now, even the blame for any drop in sales of medicine is on sales promotion employee alone. There is no joint responsibility. "If the sales promotion is considered as an industry and falls under the purview of the Industrial Disputes Act, then our work can be categorized and the management cannot blame us for all issues," an FMRAI office-bearer said.

Besides, if sales promotion is given the status of an industry it would be easy for the medical representatives to be covered by the Industrial Employment Standing Order Act (IESO) and that will have a separate standing order for the sales promotion employees. Then the management would not be able to dismiss the medical representatives without a valid reason.

"The IESO Act has clearly defined the various disciplinarian grounds on which an employee can be dismissed by the management. In case of the sales representatives, there is no such prevailing standing order. And because of this the management is dismissing the sales promotion employees even for trivial issues," the office-bearer said.