ISLAMABAD, March 11: The National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC) on Saturday stayed retrenchment of 2,300 workers of the Habib Bank announced by the management on Friday.

NIRC member S.M. Jamal granted the stay order in a petition filed by the HBL Employees’ Federation, the federation’s Islamabad district chief Nadeem Sultan told Dawn.

He said the labour court had also directed the bank’s workers to refrain from putting pressure on the management and avoid strikes till March 15. The management had contended in the court that the workers were pressing it to bow to their demands, he added.

In the evening, talks between the federation’s office-bearers and Minister for Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Ghulam Sarwar Khan hit an impasse, sources said.

They said the minister told the office-bearers that he would inform President Pervez Musharraf about the issue.

Earlier in the day, a large number of workers gathered at the HBL Towers in Blue Area from various branches in the capital and chanted anti-management slogans.

Addressing the protesters, the federation’s general secretary Qazi Mujeebur Rehman said the workers would continue their struggle against the unjust firing of 2,300 security guards, drivers and maintenance staff providing engineering support to the transport fleet and equipment and machinery for quite long in a move that would serve vested interests instead of development of the bank.

He said the bank paid Rs4,000 to Rs4,500 monthly salaries to the employees with some benefits like medical facilities, bonus and loans for marriages of daughters. If fired, the family life of the workers would be greatly disturbed, he warned.

He said the management had handed over termination letters to the workers without prior notice on Friday morning.

“We have served this organisation for 25, 26 and 27 years of our lives. We also have some rights, for which we are prepared to fight to whatever extent we can,” he said.

According to the HBL management, the non-core workers and their administration and management was “causing a severe lack of focus on core activities of the bank, like business development and customer service.”