Governance for an institution that lasts a century.

Every reference rate that survives multiple generations has formal editorial governance. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York administers SOFR, the ARRC oversees its design, and the Federal Reserve itself sits as the ultimate backstop. The Workforce Labor Index governance is built on the same posture — separating commercial interests from methodology authority, with documented change management, conflict mitigations, and a complaints procedure that exists from day one.

section 01Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is the authority for methodology changes. The Board is staffed at v1.0 by the founding team and methodology staff; over the next 24 months it expands to include academic methodologists, regulator liaisons, and industry methodology peers via the open RFC process documented on /standards.

To express interest in an open seat, email secretariat@workforcelaborindex.com with a methodology CV and a statement of how you would contribute to the Board's mission.

section 02Decision-making process

The Board makes three categories of decisions, each with a documented procedure:

1. Methodology version transitions (e.g. v1.0 → v1.1)

RFC submitted → 60-day public comment window → Board review → ratification (simple majority of voting Board members) → publication of the new version + archival of the prior version + transition statement. Older citations to prior versions remain valid in perpetuity.

2. New category additions (e.g. adding `image-classification` to the index)

Category proposal → sourcing approach review → 30-day public comment → seal a v1.0 task bank → Board ratification → activation on /wli with Tier-C reference rate. First Tier-A rate publishes when N≥50 transactions clear Pass 0.

3. Sealed bank retirement (e.g. retiring v1.0 of a category, sealing v1.1)

Retirement trigger (statistical drift, methodological gap, training-to-test signal, or scheduled rotation) → Board review → 30-day notice period → seal v1.1 → archive v1.0 with retirement note. Rates published against v1.0 remain citable under their original methodology metadata.

section 03Conflicts of interest

Mitigations

• Marketplace ↔ methodology firewall. The Editorial Board has authority over rates; the founder's commercial role does not give the founder unilateral rate-adjustment power. All methodology changes go through the RFC process documented above.
• Vendor neutrality. Vendors on the marketplace cannot influence their own AQO scores. Eval banks are sealed; verification is deterministic; the engine is CC-BY-4.0 (anyone can re-run it).
• Funding transparency. If WorkForce takes investment, the investor names, funding rounds, and any structural commitments to investors (e.g. board seats, methodology-influence vetoes) will be disclosed here within 30 days of close.
• Methodology audit on conflict events. If a marketplace fee structure changes in a way that could create rate-adjustment incentive, the Board will conduct a sensitivity analysis on existing rates and publish findings.
• Standards-body donation roadmap. The ultimate mitigation is documented at /standards: WorkForce intends to donate the methodology and sealed banks to a recognized standards body so that commercial interests are formally separable from the benchmark's integrity. Same trajectory the IFRS Foundation took with the accounting standards.

section 04Complaints procedure (IOSCO Principle 16)

Any party — submitter, user, regulator, or member of the public — can submit a formal complaint about the methodology, a published rate, or a governance decision. Procedure:

1. Submit: email secretariat@workforcelaborindex.com with subject line COMPLAINT: [topic].
2. Acknowledgment within 5 business days. The Secretary acknowledges receipt and assigns a tracking ID.
3. Substantive response within 30 days. The Board reviews and issues a substantive response. If the complaint requires more time, an extension notice is sent.
4. Public archival. Material complaints and their dispositions are archived publicly with personal information redacted unless the complainant consents to identification.

section 05Audit trail (IOSCO Principle 18)

Every editorial decision, every methodology version, every sealed bank, and every published rate carries an append-only audit anchor visible on /transparency. The complete chain — RFC submission → comment disposition → Board ratification → methodology publication → sealed bank → eval run → rate publication — is reproducible and cryptographically verifiable.

section 06Periodic review (IOSCO Principle 10)

The Editorial Board reviews the methodology and governance at minimum quarterly. Review minutes are published publicly within 14 days. Any methodology change identified in the review enters the RFC process documented above.

For governance inquiries — Editorial Board applications, RFC submissions, complaints, audit requests — email secretariat@workforcelaborindex.com. Same-day response for institutional and regulatory inquiries.