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Company Response

8 Apr 2024

VF Corporation's response to 'Who pays for the crisis' tracker allegations - March 2024

[...]

When VF must significantly reduce orders or exit from a facility, we follow our Responsible Exit Protocol to minimize negative impacts on factory workers and ensure factories operate in a way that is consistent with international labor standards and local regulations...As is the case with many in our industry, VF has seen an overall decline in consumer demand in the past several years, due to both COVID and overall global economic conditions, which has meant that we have had to subsequently reduce orders.

As part of this protocol, VF provides notice to our suppliers when we become aware that future orders will be impacted. When making the decision to exit a facility, we work with factory management to phase out ordersover time whenever possible. Our sourcing teams remain in regular communication with our supplier partners, particularly in situations where there could be order reductions, phase out plans, or other circumstances that may result in worker retrenchment.

VF works with factories to ensure, among other things, that all alternatives to retrenchment are explored first and that dismissed workers are communicated with and provided all appropriate severance and other benefits, as required by local law. When worker layoffs are communicated to VF by a supplier partner, our Responsible Sourcing Operations team maintains a dialogue with the supplier and monitors the situation to ensure all local laws are being or have been followed in terms of notice, severance, or other payments due to impacted workers. The VF team also reviews all VF required factory programs and works to scale back where significant financial resources are required to ensure the factory has adequate means to prioritize full legal payments to the retrenched workers.

We have looked into the allegations outlined in your email. Regarding the specific factories highlighted, in all instances where retrenchment occurred, VF was aware of the situation and our Responsible Exit Protocol was followed. One facility, Garmex, is not part of our supply chain and thus we have no visibility into the situation. Additionally, at Shoe Premier, there were no suspensions or terminated workers since July 2023, but there were voluntary resignations because there was no overtime due to lower order volume at the factory.

[The full response is attached]

Part of the following timelines

Vietnam: Over 1000 garment workers laid off at Ty Hung factory due to lack of orders; incl. co. responses

Vietnam: Reduced working hours & mass layoffs reported at PouYuen Vietnam; incl. co. responses

Vietnam: Garment manufacturer lays off over 1000 workers & shuts down production after drop in orders; incl. co. responses

Vietnam: Garment factory announces it will lay off over 1,000 workers due to reduced orders & financial issues; incl. co. responses

Cambodia: Over 10,000 garment factories face suspension or termination across eight factories; incl. co. responses