Faith-Based and Socially Responsible Investors Applaud Sears
for Setting New Guidelines to Prevent Abuses in Vendor Factories

New York City///September 20, 2006///A group of faith-based and socially responsible investors is applauding the release of Sears Holdings Corporation's revised "Code of Vendor Conduct and Guidelines" to prevent human rights abuses at its merchandise vendors and factories.

"We are pleased with the results of our collaborative two-year dialogue with the company," said Francis G. Coleman, executive vice president, Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), and a leader of the Sears shareholder group. "Sears' code and implementation guidelines demonstrate the company's commitment to human rights and fair working conditions. Sears takes a long-term view of their vendor relationships, choosing a path of continual improvement in their vendor standards instead of simply leaving vendors and factories behind at the first sign of trouble."

Connecticut State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier said: "As a public pension fund, we believe it is essential for companies to adopt internationally recognized labor standards to protect workers who produce the goods sold in U.S. retail stores from abuse and violation of their rights. By ensuring compliance with these standards, companies will not only protect themselves from reputational risk, but can improve productivity, on-time delivery and the quality of those goods. We commend Sears for strengthening its code and implementation policies."

Sears and shareholder representatives conducted a detailed review of the company's standards and guidelines for suppliers, resulting in a number of changes.

Shareholder institutions represented in the dialogue include CBIS, Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois, Domini Social Investments, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Sisters of Providence-Mother Joseph Province, and The State of Connecticut Treasurer's Office. These groups have actively engaged other companies on supply chain compliance issues, particularly retailers and brands in the apparel, footwear, toy and electronics sectors.

"We support the steps taken by Sears Holdings to work with factories to identify code violations and make the necessary step-by-step changes to achieve sustainable compliance," stated Rev. David M. Schilling of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). "We look forward to further discussions with the company on how to improve its monitoring and reporting on social compliance issues to shareholders and the public."

The Sears shareholder groups are members and associates of ICCR, founded in 1971 to promote corporate social responsibility. ICCR's members are faith-based institutional investors with combined portfolios worth over $100 billion. ICCR associates include social investment firms, public pension funds, union pension funds, foundations and universities.

ABOUT ICCR

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is a 35-year-old international coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors including denominations, religious communities, pension funds, healthcare corporations, foundations and dioceses with combined portfolios worth an estimated $110 billion. ICCR seeks to build a more just and sustainable society by integrating social values into corporate and investor decisions. ICCR is one of the foremost shareholder advocacy organizations in the world. More detailed information about shareholder resolutions is available from ICCR's Ethvest (sm), the comprehensive, on-line, subscription-based, ethical investor database, www.iccr.org.

CONTACT: Patrick Mitchell, (703) 276-3266 or pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com.

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