Shillong, July 19: The members of Centre of Medical and Sales Representatives’ Union (CRU) of the NER, an affiliate of Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives’ Associations of India (FMRAI) in the state of Meghalaya has expressed serious concern on the following issues that has been highlighted in the memorandum addressed to Bhupender Yadav, Minister of Labour & Employment, Government of India:
- That, like in all other sectors, industries employing sales promotion employees (SPEs) are in spree of rampant mass summary victimization in the name of restructurings, closure of establishments, selling of products to other companies thereby curtailing the numbers of the sales promotion employees and others.
- That, in the process of summary victimization postulations entailed in specific Sections of “The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and the Rules there under” are getting violated.
- That, the basic premise of statutory norms in a democratic country like India i.e. prior discussions with the industry or establishments based trade union before taking any untoward steps on the SPEs are not getting honoured rather utterly subjugated.
- That, the orders of apex courts that before retrenchments following closure or transfer or sale of an establishments all laid down Clauses of Sections 25-F, 25-N and 25-O of “The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947”, to be followed in verbatim are getting unfairly violated.
- We are enclosing the lists and details of the erring companies(as Annexure), from multinationals, national monopolies to other group of companies where in establishments have been closed or gone for partial closure leading to massive victimizations by flouting the laws of the land.
- Through this memorandum we urge upon you to activate your good office on an war foot basis, issue notice for convening meeting to all those erring employers for whom in today’s perspective hundreds of sales promotion employees pan India are getting summarily retrenched and in such meeting call us to remain present with evidences. We would state, otherwise the unemployed basket, which is getting bulged day in day out, would be further inflated with victimized sales promotion employees footfalls.
It is noteworthy to mention that in the recent past several Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies
operating in India have resorted to downsizing large number of sales promotion employees citing restructuring of business and operations. Merger, acquisitions are also taking place between Pharmaceutical companies where product portfolio is getting shifted to one company from another, but large number of sales promotion employees are losing their jobs.
Declaring closure of operation, the sales promotion employees are retrenched by companies without following the provisions of law. Even the Indian companies are also marginalizing their sales promotion employees by merger of existing divisions, initiating motivated transfers to distant places and subsequently causing retrenchments. The wages of the sales promotion employees are withheld for months together to create extreme financial hardship.
The inordinate delay in legal corridor in resolving labour disputes and shifting from existing labour laws to labour codes has been interpreted as license by the employers of pharmaceutical companies to unleash all sorts of unfair labour practices including mass retrenchments violating all statutory provisions. In addition, the absence of any Statutory Working Rules for the sales promotion employees are utilized by the employers to retrench their sales promotion employees on the pretext of not complying to unilaterally imposed retrograde service and working conditions in violation of the laws to a large extent.
The CRU, NER has demanded urgent intervention of the minister for job protection and redress the following demands:
- Direct the employers to stop mass retrenchments and other form of victimizations and issue
notice to the erring employers to roll back their illegal order of retrenchments.
- Prosecute the erring employers violating the provisions of Sales Promotion Employees
(Conditions of Services) Act, 1976 and other labour laws.
- Convene meeting of the Industrial Tripartite Committee immediately and hold periodical
meetings to discuss the issues and grievances of the sales promotion employees.
- Frame statutory working rules for the sales promotion employees maintaining the spirit of
discussion in the Industrial Tripartite Committee Meeting of the sales promotion employees
held on 8thAugust, 2017.
- Protect the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Services) Act, 1976 from repealing and subsuming into the OSH Code as it was framed to stop exploitation of the sales promotion employees based on the observation of Hon’ble Supreme Court.