64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST On 14 May 1975, the Government of India introduced Bill No. XII of 1975 called the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Bill in the Rajya Sabha. It is stated in clause 2 (d) that sales promotion employee means any. person by whatever name called (including an apprentice) employed or engaged in any establishment for hire or reward to do any work relating to promotion and sales or business or both and i) who draws wages (being wages not including any commission) not exceeding seven hundred and fifty rupees per mensem; or ii) who had drawn wages, (being wages, including commission) or commission only in either case, not exceeding nine thousand rupees in the aggregate in the twelve months immediately preceding the month in which this Act applies to such establishment and continues to draw such wages or commission, in the aggregate, not exceeding the amount aforesaid in a year, but does not include any such person who is employed or engaged mainly in a managerial or administrative capacity. * Workmen or Bosses? The Bill has made the amount of the wage the determining factor for a field worker to be considered within the scope of this legislation. By fixing the wage ceiling, the Bill discriminates one section of the employees from the others although all do the same job. It leads to an anomalous situation in which one section of field workers drawing Rs 750 and less will be covered while those drawing Rs 751 and above will be left outside the Act's purview. In fact, the wage, ceiling is an invitation to the managements to get rid of a field worker when he crosses it by quoting the law of the land and saying: "you are not a workman since you are now drawing Rs 751." Thus the Bill which was supposed to afford protection to the field workers in the pharmaceutical industry denies this fundamental justice by the clauses which will keep a large section from the purview of the Industrial Disputes Act section (2) S, which defines a workman. The Standing Labour Committee at the 29th session held in July 1970 considered a proposal that the definition of the term 'workman* might be amended to include, among others, persons engaged in sales promotion.2 The Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions also came to the conclusion "that the ends of social justice to this class of people will be met only by suitably amending the definition of 'workman5 in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 in a manner that the medical representatives are also covered by the definition of'workman* in the said Act/'8 The Bill has thus proved to be only a deceptive victory. The medical representatives who have begun to discover their own strength through organization have a long way to march. N I JOSEPH 1 Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Bill, No XII of 1975. 2 Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions, 30th Report. » Ibid.