When 200 Indorama Agro workers banded together under the leadership of a local woman to form Uzbekistan’s newest independent union last month, it was a pivotal moment.
“For us, the union has become the only opportunity to improve our situation,” one worker told openDemocracy. “We are not against foreign companies or investors or government institutions, we just want the rights of workers to be guaranteed and protected, that is it!”
Though this moment passed all too quickly after the union’s independence was essentially quashed, this news brought international attention to the rot in this Central Asian state, now in its fifth year of post-Karimov rule. For local farmers and workers, the rot has grown deeper since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree to shift cotton production from state control to private clusters in March last year.
