by Giulia Cimpanelli
A profession that is dying. And we are not talking about craftsmanship, nor about functions replaced by the web or technology, but about drug sales reps, who have been experiencing a deep crisis for some time. If in the nineties there were about 22 thousand and in 2000 they had reached 34 thousand, today they have decreased to 16, of which 5 thousand are commercial agents.
This is what the Federation of Pharmaceutical Representatives Associations (Federaisf) denounces. what is assumed from the clear cut of the university faculties aimed at guaranteeing this title, which have gone from 10 to threeand from the direct experiences of the professionals themselves.
After a flourishing period, during which whistleblowers had career opportunities and were even contacted by the same companies that were bidding on wages and benefits to hire them, today these professionals lose their jobs. Mario Di Maira is well aware that at the age of 54 he was made redundant by the pharmaceutical company of which he had been employed for about ten years and after 25 of work in the sector.
With him 150 informants were fired and another 600 had been left at home in previous years. The crisis, therefore, reaps victims in the pharmaceutical sector: "But the incredible thing is that my company cut off 150 heads after 2011 ended with a 12 percent increase in turnover", he explains.
