A Scheme for Improving Lifelong Vocational and Educational Training with Reduction of Working Hours

Abstract

Through the stages of economic development, there have been unceasing efforts for reducing the working hours along with encouraging the industries and increasing the income level. Reducing working hours had mainly targeted to secure workers' safety and welfare in the early stage of industrialization, but today it entails for workers to ensure the quality of life and take full advantage of their leisure time as productivity and industrial structure become highly advanced. On 23 October 2000, the Korean Tripartite Committee (KTC) comprised of representatives from labor, management and government sectors fundamentally compromised on reduction of the legal working hours from the current 44 per week to 40, and the government is set to submit its own bill on a five-day workweek system to the National Assembly in February next year. When it comes to the implementation of reduction in working hours including the five-day workweek system, however, there have been little studies that systematically analyze how to take full advantage of extra time in terms of life-long vocational and educational training. This research is focused on the feasible five-day workweek system. IT aims to survey the needs and potentials of workers on the vocational education and training with upcoming work-hour reduction and provide policy suggestions for expansion of lifelong vocational and educational training with the reduction in working hours. The suggestions are based on exploring the current situations of night and weekend educational training at the institutes for lifelong vocational education and training, capacity and willingness to provide the educational training programs that correspond to the reduction in working hours.