Response from New Balance

New Balance strongly discourages the use of temporary and contract labor in our supply chain, and over the last five years has withdrawn from a number of factories where we were unable to change such employment arrangements. Our philosophy is that if a job is permanent, then the worker who does the job should have a permanent contract. We allow temporary employment contracts in specific circumstances where seasonal fluctuations merit seeking temporary help with production. Before allowing supplier factories to hire temporary workers, however, we require that they clearly quantify how many temporary positions they need to create, elaborate the reasons behind the need and why it is unavoidable, and fix the length of the contract to no longer than necessary. We allow temporary contracts for no more than 6 months.