Mapping Labour Unions in Pakistan • As it serves as a labour court, employers take the unions to NIRC rather than directly at the provincial level. This further stretches the meagre resources of unions. • Trade unions point out the appointment of retired and contract-based judges at NIRC who are mostly not sensitised on labour rights, nor are they observed to make an effort to upgrade their knowledge. • As NIRC also determines the registration of trans-provisional trade unions, employers seek to create paper unions by declaring their provincial establishment as trans provincial by opening a paper office in other provinces. Workers unions have been demanding to register unions only in the zone of the registration of union headquarters to counter this trend. 2.5. Trade Unions and Recent Developments Devolution and the granting of GSP+ are the two most important developments in the past decade that had the potential of impacting trade unions by way of improved legislation strengthening freedom of organisation, decentralised implementation mechanisms and greater involvement of rights-based infrastructure to implement fundamental rights and core ILO conventions. This section briefly documents trade unions own experience of these two developments. Though the details of the 18 th constitutional amendment have been shared in the first section, it would be worth reminding the core aspects of the amendment for the workers movement. 2.6. 18 th Constitutional Amendment The 18 th constitutional amendment passed in April 2010 abolished the concurrent legislative list transferring all the matters mentioned therein within the jurisdiction of the provinces that now hold the responsibility for making and implementing legislation. The matters relating to the welfare of labour and trade unions outlined in the Concurrent Legislative list as Items No. 26 and 27 were also transferred to provinces. As a result of this, all provinces developed respective industrial relations laws. How the devolution and subsequent development of the Industrial Relations Act 2012(covering federal government) impacted NIRC has been covered in a separate section, this section shall briefly address trade unions experience of the IRA under the 18 th amendment. It is also recommended to refer to the article“Challenge 36