Uzbekistan labor law: the essentials for HR

The point isn't a list of articles — it's the habit of documenting

Uzbekistan's Labour Code was renewed in 2023, and since then HR teams stumble less over not knowing a rule than over being unable to evidence it. A rule can be read in an evening; proving six months later that an employee was notified in time and consented in writing is impossible if nobody kept it.

So the practical work comes down to two things: knowing which events require a written trace, and arranging for that trace to appear on its own rather than from someone's memory. Below are the points where it most often turns out there is no trace.

Where the gap usually shows up

This is not legal advice — it is a list of places worth looking before somebody else does. Check the exact wording in every case against the current text of the code and with your own lawyer.

• Working-time records. They have to exist and be reconstructable for a past period — "we remember the shift ran to 18:00" is not a document.
• Overtime and rest-day work: the grounds, the consent and the premium rate. Three parts — and missing any one of them undermines the other two.
• Leave: the schedule, the notice and the actual taking of it. Days accrued and never used are a liability for the company, not a saving.
• Changes to working conditions — schedule, location, pay. What matters here is not only that consent exists, but how far in advance the employee was notified.
• Disciplinary measures: the employee's explanation, the deadlines, proportionality. The procedure matters here no less than the grounds.
• Termination: the grounds, the procedure, the final settlement. Most labour disputes start with the procedure, not the grounds.
• Employee personal data, biometrics included: on what basis you collect it, where it is stored, who has access.

How to stop checking all this by hand

Manual checking doesn't scale: at a hundred employees HR can still hold the deadlines in their head; at five hundred they can't. What works is tying the document to the event. A shift closed with overtime — the approval request creates itself. A notice period comes due — the task appears in advance, not on the day someone remembered it.

The second is to store the history, not just the result. Who made the change, when, and what it was before. A summary table answers "how much"; the history answers "why this way" — and in a dispute it is the second answer you need.