The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Sales representative not a workman: High Court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 09, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Sales representative not a workman: High Court

Special Correspondent

Order directing a private firm to reinstate
sales representative set aside
“Sales promotion distinct from types of work covered by Section 2(s) of the ID Act”

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has held that a sales representative is not a workman as defined in the Industrial Disputes Act, and has set aside a single judge order directing a private company to reinstate a sales representative in service.

A Division Bench of Justice S.J. Mukhopadhaya and Justice M. Venugopal, allowing the appeal preferred by the Coimbatore-based Scientific Fertiliser Company Private Limited, said:

“We are of the opinion that second respondent/writ petitioner (P. Malayannan), while performing the duties of sales representative in the discharge of his official duties, has not come within the scope of manual, skilled, unskilled, technical, operational, clerical or supervisory work for hire or reward, and if he has performed any of such work then it is not part of his main avocation as sales representative.”

As on date, the law remains that sales representative is not a workman under the ID Act, the Bench said. A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had held that the work of promotion of sales of products or services of establishments was “distinct from and independent of the types of work covered by the definition of Section 2(s) of the ID Act,” and therefore the definition of workman under the ID Act would not obviously cover the Sales Promotion Employees (Conditions of Service) Act 1976.

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