Uzbekistan will conduct national monitoring of working conditions for cotton pickers from Sept. 25 to Oct. 31, aiming to prevent child and forced labor in the fields. The Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan announced the launch at a briefing on Sept. 18.
The monitoring group has 65 specialists, five in each province. They include representatives of sectoral trade unions, the federation's labor inspectors, and members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the National Association of Non-State Non-Profit Organizations.
At 7:00 a.m. every Monday and Saturday, team leaders receive random GPS coordinates for up to three locations in their province and head out to inspect them by 9:00 a.m. Data and photo reports are sent to the federation daily.
Since Sept. 15, the federation and its branches have run round-the-clock duty for the entire season. Labor rights violations can be reported by calling the short number 1092, through the federation's website or via its Telegram bot.
Authorities have put up 200 banners across Uzbekistan and are preparing another 10,000 posters, while 200,000 leaflets with this information will be handed out to pickers.
"The current situation cannot be compared even with 2020, let alone a decade ago. Previously, there was no liability for forced labor, either administrative or criminal. Now the Administrative Code has been toughened, and a separate article has been added to the Criminal Code," said Bakhtiyor Makhmadaliev, the federation's deputy chairman.
He said the federation has not recorded any cases of child or forced labor in its monitoring in recent years. Problems that keep surfacing include delayed wages, work without contracts and inadequate working conditions. The checks continue partly because international organizations place more trust in findings produced by non-state bodies, he said.
Katerina Gorbunova, a representative of the Better Cotton Initiative in Uzbekistan, said such monitoring will become unnecessary only once harvesting is mechanized. The organization certifies more than 20% of the world's cotton and has run its own labor monitoring in Uzbekistan since 2022.
"Take large farms in the United States or Brazil: three people work a 10,000-hectare farm, and monitoring simply makes no sense there. But when the same 10,000 hectares involve 5,000 temporary workers, it is a completely different story," she said.
Gorbunova said the cotton season draws a sizable share of the population into manual picking. Three or four years ago, about 2 million people were mobilized for the harvest each year, most of them employed informally.
Informal employment is common in agriculture worldwide, not just in Uzbekistan, and the sector carries more labor-law risks than any other, she said. She therefore describes monitoring not as a punitive tool but as a form of support for workers and a kind of training for farmers. As employers, they typically have minimal knowledge of labor law and gradually learn the rules through the process.
Last season's findings show the violations pickers face. The federation found no cases of child or forced labor in 2025, but its inspectors recorded:
- 166 cases of late wage payments, affecting 8,752 pickers;
- 227 cases of work without a labor contract, affecting 9,075 people;
- 1,222 pickers at 24 farms and clusters working without proper working and rest conditions.
Minimum working-condition standards are approved each August by the Republican Tripartite Commission on Social and Labor Issues, which includes representatives of the government, trade unions and employers. Under those standards, field camps must have toilets, showers, hot meals and clean drinking water.
The State Labor Inspectorate of the Ministry of Employment and Poverty Reduction also conducted its own checks last season. Inspectors visited 986 farms and fined 116 officials a total of 397.44 million soms ($) for failing to pay workers. The inspectorate's hotline (1176) and Telegram bot received 222 complaints about payment delays, and pickers were subsequently repaid 1.785 billion soms.
Overall findings of the 2026 monitoring will be presented in December.
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