Just days after sales reps charged their employers were flouting government pricing norms, the pharmaceutical industry is pushing the government to withdraw recognition of reps as “workmen,” a classification that gives them the right to form trade unions, The Business Standard reports.

The Indian Drugs Manufacturers Association (IDMA), which represents 650 small and mid-sized drugmakers, has approached Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes to de-classify sales reps under the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act of 1976. The Organization of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), which comprises about 100 research-based multinational and Indian drugmakers, is supporting the IDMA move, the Standard writes.

“The Sales Promotion Employees Act needs to do away with the medical representatives’ classification as workmen in view of its negative effects on flexibility of business operations,” IDMA secretary general Dara Patel tells the Standard. “Considering medical representatives as workmen is an anachronism. The world over, a medical representative, by virtue of his job function, is considered part of the management team of the company.”

The move comes after the left-leaning Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives Associations of India (FMRAI) called for a centralized working rule to prevent drugmakers from ‘exploiting’ them. FMRAI has a membership of over 50,000, or a fourth of the industry’s total sales force. It is also known for its stand favoring the promotion of public sector drug units for ensuring quality meds at affordable prices.

The federation had approached the central government seeking the introduction of an eight-hour working schedule and uniformity in working conditions across the industry through legislation on central working rules for medical salesmen, according to the Standard. It wanted the government to fix the number of daily visits a rep should make to clinicians and wanted drugmakers to end the practice of making them solely responsible for achieving sales targets.

A similar battle is also under way in Italy, where Federisf, a union for sales reps, asked the government to cut the prices paid to drugmakers because of job cuts and outsourcing.