V.A.L.U.E. Facts

Overview of Program Effectiveness/Continuing Challenges

Since 1999, we and our buying agents have conducted thousands of audits of factories producing goods for TJX. Based on the knowledge learned from these audits and the program in general, we continue to revise and enhance our program.

TJX believes deeply in the need to drive ethical sourcing throughout our supply chain, yet this effort is a challenging one. Our main challenge is unique to TJX. Because of our small percentage of private label purchases to our entire merchandise offering, we generally do not represent a large enough or consistent enough percentage of a specific factory's business to exert meaningful influence on their business practices. Indeed, our business model demands that our sourcing efforts be spread over many factories at any one time. Moreover, the goods we source and our factory base is constantly shifting. This is one of the reasons that we focus our Vendor Social Compliance initiative so heavily on the cooperation, support and leadership of our buying agents, whose relationships with production facilities through multiple purchasers tend to be more extensive than our business alone.

We have, on limited occasions, been forced to sever relationships with suppliers over issues discovered during our audit and compliance processes. But we have also had the opportunity to work with the vast majority of our private label suppliers to define and explain our expectations, so that we might work together to improve conditions in facilities producing goods for TJX.

Uzbekistan
Consistent with our commitment to high standards and social responsibility, over the past several years, we have been attentive to the reports of alleged forced child labor in Uzbekistan. We have notified our global vendor base that TJX prohibits the use of child labor in any phase of manufacturing of its goods for sale, and it is our expectation and our requirement that our vendors will not knowingly use any cotton sourced from Uzbekistan. A letter on our policy regarding Uzbekistan cotton is posted on our intranet for vendors. Our vendors are also reminded of our policy regarding Uzbekistan cotton during our vendor training sessions.

On two separate occasions, TJX was a signatory among many other companies, civil society organizations and investors on letters urging the government of Uzbekistan to ensure there is an immediate cessation to forced child labor in the cotton fields. We have participated in multi-stakeholder meetings to address this issue in Washington, D.C. in 2009, and New York and Brussels in 2010. Among 60 other brands and retailers, TJX was a signatory on a pledge, sponsored by the Responsible Sourcing Network, to not knowingly source Uzbek cotton until the Government of Uzbekistan eliminates the practice of forced child labor. We also continue to participate in periodic multi-stakeholder calls to stay current on this matter. We remain focused on this issue.

TJX Position Against Involuntary or Forced Labor
TJX's vendor relationships are based on a mutual commitment to uphold the high ethical standards embodied in our Vendor Code of Conduct and Vendor Social Compliance program. As a condition of conducting business with TJX, all vendors must comply with our Vendor Code of Conduct, which prohibits them from using any form of involuntary or forced labor, including labor obtained through slavery or human trafficking. We contract with both independent auditors and other third parties to verify aspects of our private label product supply chain, and to evaluate and address risks of forced labor, including slavery and human trafficking. These independent auditors and third parties conduct unannounced audits of our private label suppliers during specified time windows to verify the supplier's compliance with this standard. TJX vendors are expected to cooperate fully with these audits, and to provide our auditors with full access to their facilities, employees, and documentation. TJX has procedures to take appropriate steps, should we learn that a vendor or supplier is failing to meet our standards, including remediation, cancellation of purchase orders, and termination of our business relationship. Further, TJX provides training for relevant Associates and management, as well as for private label vendors and their factory managers. This training, which has included guidance on recognizing and mitigating the risk of forced labor in the supply chain, now also addresses slavery and human trafficking. We believe that these efforts underscore to our vendors and suppliers our commitment and seriousness of purpose with respect to the ethical sourcing of our products.

High Quality
In addition to ethics, we hold high standards for quality. Our Store Operations groups have established procedures and systems to manage product recalls and address customer concerns.

Continuing Our Commitment
This is a tremendously challenging undertaking, and we know that we do not have all of the answers. Indeed, no company does. But we believe we are responding to the challenge by making our commitment clear to our vendors, buying agents and Associates, by our auditing and training efforts, and by reporting about our efforts here and in our CSR report.