The dual labour market in Korea

This chapter presents a case study on SsangYong Motor, one of the largest automobile manufacturers in Korea, to examine the experiences of its regular workers after being laid off. The study reveals how standard manufacturing workers, who were once considered insiders in the dual labour market, fall into the outsider category due to weak institutional protection. The case study represents cell 2 in the two-by-two matrix explained in Chapter 1, which includes wage workers who are covered by institutional protection, such as regular workers in large corporations and the public sector, who are considered labour market insiders. Victims of the 2009 SsangYong Motor layoffs experienced a sharp decrease in their income immediately after the layoff and were drifting from one unstable job to another, such as outsourcing, daily labour and micro-scale self-employment. In this chapter, I highlight the issue of old precarity, where workers with stable employment status can easily slide into precarious work once they lose institutional protection.

The dual structure of the Korean labour market has been discussed since the mid-1980s in Korea, mainly driven by the dual labour market theory (Lee H.S., 1984). A significant body of research has pointed out the dual structure of the Korean labour market in various ways. The related studies can be largely divided into three categories according to the criteria for classifying the dual structure of the labour market.

Studies in the first category have examined the formation of a dual structure in job stability and wage level (Lee J.H., 1992; Jeong E.H. and Jeon B.Y., 2001; Jeong E.H., 2002; Beck S.H., 2014; Lee S.Y., 2016). According to these studies, there exists a dual structure in the Korean labour market in terms of wage and employment protection depending on employment status and company size.

Introduction

In March 2013, the British financial sector was shocked by the news that one of the larger banks in the country, the Co-operative Bank, had accumulated losses of ￡600 million. Later in the year, it emerged that the Bank had a shortfall in its capital of about ￡1.5 billion, putting the bank on the brink of collapse. Until then, the Co-operative Bank plc had been 100 per cent owned by The Co-operative Group. The rescue operation required a major restructuring, following which the Co-operative Group's shareholding fell to 30 per cent. Later, in 2017, in the course of a second restructuring, the Group was forced to sell all its remaining shares, leaving the bank 100 per cent owned by private equity, mostly US hedge funds. The sad irony of the story was that the institution created to advance the principles of fairness, co-operation and mutuality had ended up in the hands of organizations that for many were the epitome of capitalist greed and exclusivity.

Much of the blame for the near collapse of the bank centred on the blatant incompetence of the directors putting in doubt the workability of the cooperative participatory principles, allowing unqualified people to sit on the board of a major cooperative company. The spotlight was on the Reverend Paul Flowers. As Chairman of the Co-operative Bank, he presided over the policies that had led the Bank to a catastrophe. An investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority found Flowers entirely unfit for the job, to which Flowers progressed through the elective processes of United Cooperatives. He had never worked in banking in any senior capacity when, in March 2010, he was put at the helm of the Co-operative Bank – a bank with ￡50 billion of assets, ￡36 billion of customer deposits and 4.7 million customers. However, there were people who saw the problem not in the principle but in its implementation. Rob Harrison, editor of Ethical Consumer magazine and an activist for the Save Our Bank campaign, argued that the implementation of cooperative principles in the management of mutual societies was predominantly a question of training and education: ‘You need to spend lots of money on training people because they aren't necessarily going to turn up with all you need to manage a complicated company.

Introduction: Hale’s legacy

Matthew Hale is often maligned for visiting upon women in perpetuity a legal regime ill-disposed towards the rape victim (see, for example, Geis, 1978). In fact, Hale adopted a more liberal approach to rape law than many of his contemporaries. As we saw in Chapter 2, Hale rejected the emission requirement long before it was finally abandoned and was sceptical of the claim that conception evidenced a woman’s consent to sex. True, wives have Hale to thank for crafting the legal rationale supporting the marital rape exemption. Nevertheless, his most lasting contribution to the legal treatment of rape surely arises from his remarks about the need for caution when assessing the credibility of a rape complainant.

Hale did not invent the idea that rape victims should not be trusted. It was not uncommon, even in the 17th century, for men accused of rape to attribute a malign motive to their accuser. Certainly, by the time Hale’s treatise was published in 1736, challenging the motives and veracity of the rape prosecutrix was a recognised defence tactic (Simpson, 1986; Edelstein, 1998). Hale’s comments would have resonated with a legal and popular culture already well attuned to the idea that women lacked moral fibre and were prone to dissemble, particularly about matters of sex (Fletcher, 1995: 69–77). Nevertheless, it would be wrong to view Hale’s remarks solely in terms of the misogynistic attitudes of the time. As Laurie Edelstein acknowledges, Hale was genuinely concerned to ensure that those accused of serious crimes received a fair trial (Edelstein, 1998: 355–6), repeatedly expressing the view that justice should err on the side of the innocent: ‘It is better that five guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should die’ (Hale, 1800: 39.289).

Yet, such a juristic preoccupation with countering the risks of false accusations of rape does not appear to have extended to other crimes or certainly not to the same extent. Hay’s analysis of malicious prosecution cases in the 18th century shows, rather, a lack of judicial and public concern about false accusations other than of rape (1989: 377–8).

Introduction

This chapter considers the degree to which the use of sexual history evidence continues to pose a problem in contemporary rape trials. To this end, we collate and analyse empirical studies, evaluating the extent to which these support claims either that the problems associated with the use of sexual history evidence have been resolved or that it continues to present justice challenges in the courtroom. As always, England and Wales, and to a lesser extent Scotland and Northern Ireland, are our primary jurisdictional focus, although we also highlight evidence that has emerged elsewhere, most notably from the jurisdictions considered in Chapter 4. As we shall see and based on the evidence available, the picture remains patchy and incomplete. Moreover, contestation abounds not just as to what can be gleaned from existing studies but also as to whether their conception and design is sufficiently robust to allow credible conclusions to be drawn. Part of the problem here is that the issue itself – the issue of what inferences can properly be drawn from evidence of a complainant’s prior sexual behaviour – garners little in the way of consensus among those who express a view: one person’s ‘use’ of sexual history evidence is another person’s ‘misuse’, with what passes for some as ‘common sense’ presenting as patriarchal ideology to others. In Chapter 6, we address this contestation head on, focusing directly on the nature and validity of relevance claims underpinning the use of complainant sexual history evidence in rape trials. For the moment, we draw attention to the fact that the underlying premises justifying the use of sexual history evidence are deeply disputed to highlight a particular problem associated with empirical efforts to chart its use and misuse.

A range of approaches have nevertheless been adopted to precisely this end. Studies of the use of sexual history evidence and/ or of the operation of legal regulatory frameworks designed to prevent or minimise its misuse have taken a variety of forms, including trial observations, analyses of court transcripts, audio files and other kinds of criminal justice records (for example, police files), surveys of or interviews with judges, lawyers, victims and diverse criminal justice stakeholders, jury simulation studies and analyses of case law.

Insecurity of platform work

This chapter examines the labour status of platform workers in the Korean digital labour market, situated in cell 3 of the theoretical framework, which is characterised by a high level of melting labour but a low level of institutional protection consistency. Melting labour emphasises the ambiguity in determining a worker’s identity or employer, resulting in a legal blind spot for workers in new forms of work. The inconsistency of existing institutional protection policies and new forms of work brought about by the digital economy results in various forms of precarious work. Official data and legal definitions of platform work in Korea are presented, and the expansion of the platform labour market into diverse sectors with the advancement of technology and high internet usage rates in Korea is explained. The chapter categorises platform companies and workers and conducts interviews with workers in delivery, housekeeping services and high-skilled freelance platforms, examining their working conditions and experiences with social protection. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the precariousness and lack of institutional protection experienced by platform workers in Korea. Specifically, it highlights the inconsistency of the social security system in providing coverage and mitigating insecurity for those situated in cell 3 of the theoretical framework.

Platform workers differ from traditional workers in that they typically have mediated employment arrangements rather than direct employment contracts, performing fragmentary and intermittent work while bearing costs for safety accidents and various expenses, such as computer or vehicle purchases, fuel, insurance premiums and repairs. As the digital division of labour expands, the insecurity of platform labour is exacerbated by the following characteristics of the labour process. The first characteristic is the three-sidedness and power asymmetry in data exchange (Schmidt, 2017).

Introduction

This chapter analyses the emergence of new collectivist organizations in response to the growth of the platform economy, with a particular focus on a blockchain-based software developers’ collective, dOrg. This digital collective seeks to respond to a 21st-century challenge: providing decent conditions and agency to workers in a world experiencing globalization, digitalization and rising inequality. As with other contributions to this volume, this chapter shows what alternative business structures, such as cooperatives and collectives, can offer to discussions on the future of work, while also highlighting how organizations like dOrg innovate long-standing cooperative governance structures. Through a case study of this transnational collective, I describe how its governance structure innovates upon, and departs from, Rothschild and Whitt's (1989, pp 62–63) two ideal types of organization – the bureaucratic organization and the collectivist-democratic organization. I then go on to demonstrate how dOrg addresses agency problems by way of what I call corporate governance-by-design (Mannan, 2018, p 191). In the last part of the chapter, I explain how this concept varies from traditional corporate governance and evaluate the extent to which the measures introduced to achieve corporate governance-by-design, such as reputation-weighted voting, address the governance challenges faced by such organizations. I conclude by reflecting on the lessons that organizations like dOrg can offer co-operatives in the 21st century.

It is necessary to clarify the usage of certain terms. In this chapter, a platform refers to a business model used by firms to bring together various groups and intermediate transactions of tangible and intangible resources between them (Montalban et al, 2019, p 807). There is a wide variety of businesses that use the platform business model (that is, platform firms) in existence, but this chapter focuses particularly on labour platforms. These are platforms where users on one side of a platform provide labour for users on other side(s) of the platform. Through the suite of technologies used by labour platform firms – from their proprietary matching algorithms to their users’ smartphone sensors – the platform collects, processes and uses data to encourage and facilitate these interactions (Mannan, 2022). These firms are asset-light in the sense that they do not own physical assets or produce goods or provide services themselves but rely on the labourers to use their own assets to supply goods and services to other users by transacting on the platform's marketplace.

Introduction

Many contributions in this volume refer to the Preston Model which aims to use co-operation and co-operatives to build community wealth; significantly more nuanced delineations are available in the introduction. This chapter sits at an angle to this model, and is concerned with a Higher Education Co-operative using co-operative pedagogies to facilitate Assetbased Community Development (ABCD) in a project working with older people project which Leicester Vaughan College (LVC) completed in 2019. On one hand the Community Explorers project is quite different to many of the other examples in this volume; on the other it seeks broadly comparable goals, albeit in a different co-operative context. But using this example, in this chapter it is argued that cooperative pedagogy is particularly suited to projects seeking to build community capacity with adults generally, and ABCD. After discussing the Cooperative Identity and the bundle of cooperative pedagogies, it will consider the adaptability of coop pedagogies and their value in this kind of context. The chapter begins by exploring various terms and situating this work in the relevant literatures. The project itself is then discussed, finishing with reflections on how cooperative pedagogies were useful in building capacity in individuals within their communities. In doing this, the aim is to show how cooperative pedagogy and Education Co-operatives can have broad uses for the movement.

Co-operative learning and related terms

It is necessary first to clarify some nomenclature. Cooperative learning and related terms might be used to describe several connected but quite different things, partly because cooperative education has a long history. First, it might refer to cooperative training, sometimes called Cooperative Education and Training (CET): gaining the skills needed to be an effective cooperator or other forms of training within co-operatives in order that those in them can function – essentially technical training within the movement, whatever personal benefits and capacities might accrue as a result. As a subset of this, it might also refer to other types of learning within the movement, which across the long history of a global social movement which has had broad educational aims since its earliest days, encompasses an enormous range of undertakings (Baloche, 2011; Woodin, 2011, 2017, 2019).

Introduction

As the author wrote this chapter, he had an eye on BBC TV's Digging for Britain (BBC 2, 16/1/2022), one section of which covered an archaeological dig in Rochdale, revealing fascinating artefacts of Rochdale's industrial history. Celebrated TV commentator Alice Roberts commented upon Rochdale's ‘small part’ in the history of industrialization. One can only assume that she is unaware that the town bequeathed a model of democratic cooperative commercial organization which spread around the world. Having considered the importance of Rochdale Town Hall, it is a great pity she did not walk just 100 yards from the dig site to the building on Toad Lane which housed the first coop store (now a museum) for another, arguably more important, example of ‘living’ archaeology, and the origin of Rochdale's greatest contribution to global development. But she is not the first popular academic to ignore co-operation. The celebrated BBC TV Series Turn Back Time: The High Street, aired in 2010, used a reality format to examine the evolution of high street retail in the Somerset town of Shepton Mallet. No reference was made to the fact that the town had the largest and most successful cooperative society in the county. That the programme made great claims to be educational in intent makes the omission even more egregious. Yet both instances allude to a gradual retreat of co-operation from British popular consciousness.

Until early in this century in Britain the word ‘coop’ frequently conjured up nostalgic memories of ‘divi’ numbers (member registration numbers used for recording purchases from the coop store by members so that dividends could be calculated) among a fast-disappearing older generation. For many elderly working-class people the coop symbolized a fixed point in daily life in the first half of the 20th century; the local store which rewarded loyal customer-members was a reliable fixture for several generations of working-class communities. But the nostalgia itself suggests an important story in the development of the British social economy. As the later 20th century wore on, such recollections became rarer, and the coop store was increasingly regarded as a fading feature of a disappearing industrial social landscape.

Introduction

During the 1980s the Scottish steel industry experienced ‘death by a thousand cuts’ due to the ruthless free market restructuring of the UK economy implemented by Margaret Thatcher's governments, which culminated in the closure of the vast Ravenscraig steelworks in 1992. The town of Motherwell in Lanarkshire, with a population of c.30,000, stood at the epicentre of the Scottish steel industry. The demise of bulk steelmaking not only generated mass unemployment and economic dislocation in Motherwell, it presented a challenge to the identity of the town, which was renowned as Scotland's ‘Steelopolis’ (Duncan, 1991, p 1). The local football team, Motherwell Football Club (FC), emerged from this scarring process as the last remaining symbol of local identity and pride. Yet, a decade on from Ravenscraig's closure, faced with declining attendances, falling television revenues and a spiralling wage bill following a short period of large-scale investment from a high-profile owner-investor, the club entered administration. This chapter analyses how a community-centred campaign to save Motherwell FC from extinction in 2002 evolved into a supporter takeover through the Well Society, which resulted in Motherwell FC becoming the first top division football club in Scotland and the UK to be supporter owned in 2016.

The chapter, which constitutes the first published academic account of Motherwell FC's journey to community ownership, is undergirded by a historical approach which analyses the factors underpinning supporter cooperative formation in their local socio-economic environment with a view to enabling the recent past to offer insights into contemporary social and economic trends. Deindustrialization forms the key reference point in the chapter, which interprets Motherwell FC's adoption of supporter ownership as a reaction against the detrimental effects of market liberalism on the local community since the 1980s. Existing scholarship on deindustrialization, influenced by E.P. Thompson's seminal work on ‘the moral economy of the English crowd’, has linked the strongly collectivist reaction to deindustrialization in Scotland to the prevalence of a workingclass ‘moral economy’ perspective, which prioritized ‘economic security’ and ‘control of resources’ (Thompson, 1971; Phillips et al, 2021). The mass unemployment, deprivation and erosion of social capital which arose due to the Thatcher governments’ market liberal restructuring was interpreted as an attack on communal as well as individual security (Perchard, 2013; Gibbs, 2018; Ferns, 2019).

Setting the scene: from Ched Evans to #MeToo

On 14 October 2016, four years after his initial conviction in 2012, Chedwyn Evans (known as ‘Ched’) was acquitted of rape in a retrial at Cardiff Crown Court after the admission of new evidence of the complainant’s sexual behaviour with other men. The verdict, and how it was reached, provoked intense, deeply diverging public responses. Evans’ celebrity status as a professional footballer with Sheffield United FC, alongside the public support provided by his fiancée (and her millionaire father), drew the inevitable attention of the tabloid press, fuelling an apparently insatiable public appetite for stories of ‘sleazy’ behaviour by sports stars and other celebrities (Brown, 2016). Meanwhile, Evans’ complainant had to be relocated repeatedly and to change her name after being relentlessly harassed and identified ‘thousands of times’ on social media (Morris, 2016a). The Evans saga – from first accusation, to conviction, incarceration, appeal and final acquittal – prompted an explosion of public commentary, speculation and (sometimes shallow) handwringing, at the heart of which lay, on any interpretation of the facts, a sordid tale of male sexual entitlement and female sexual degradation. As one headline after Evans’ acquittal declared: ‘There are no winners as rape case drags football down to its darkest depths’ (Herbert, 2016).

Nearly a decade later, the Evans case remains an unresolved point of contestation within criminal justice scholarship and debate. Other celebrity cases have come and gone, displacing it in terms of notoriety and public attention. The 2018 ‘Rugby Rape Trial’ (as it is popularly known) – in which Irish rugby players, Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding, were tried and acquitted of rape in a Belfast Crown Court – plumbed the murky depths of the misogynistic culture which repeatedly surfaces in elite male sport, shocking and riveting the highly conservative Northern Irish public in equal measure (Killean et al, 2021: 3–5). #MeToo is also a post-Evans phenomenon, shifting the public gaze from sports personalities to film and entertainment moguls. In 2020, producer, Harvey Weinstein, was convicted of rape and sexual assault after multiple women who had worked with him blew the whistle on his predatory sexual behaviour. His conviction was soon followed by that of Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell, the deceased media mogul: in 2021, Maxwell was convicted of trafficking girls for sexual purposes on behalf of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (also deceased).