Labor education institute completes nine regional councils with Gyeongnam meeting

The Korea Employment and Labor Education Institute said Thursday it held a labor education council meeting in South Gyeongsang Province, completing this year's network of nine regional councils formed with local labor, management and government consultative bodies.

The meeting took place at the secretariat office of the South Gyeongsang Province labor-management-government council, organized around the council's labor education cooperation subcommittee. Labor and management organizations, labor-related agencies and experts from the region attended to share the local state of labor education and training demand and to discuss the education tasks the province needs and how institutions can work together.

The institute, headed by President Lee Jong-sun, has been building the councils through the subcommittees of the labor-management-government consultative bodies that serve as regional social dialogue forums, so that regions can identify their own labor education agendas and keep the discussion going. The councils are charged with setting regional directions for labor education, surveying training demand, developing joint projects, linking instructors and budgets, and making policy proposals and building networks.

The institute took applications from labor-management-government councils in all 17 metropolitan cities and provinces and selected nine regions for this year. The South Gyeongsang meeting was the ninth and last of the year, following South Jeolla, Gwangju, South Chungcheong, Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Jeju, Busan and Sejong.

The work is tied to the institute's "Employment and Labor Education 2.0" strategy, which it declared to respond preemptively to labor issues in an era of sweeping industrial change. Its core tasks include promoting lifelong labor education, strengthening the core capacities of labor, management and social dialogue, training employment and labor administration specialists, and reinforcing its role as the country's central labor education hub.

With this year's councils now in place, the institute plans to compile the education demand and cooperation tasks raised in the nine regions, share good practices across regions and gradually widen the number of participating areas. It will also support a model in which regions take the lead in finding and carrying out the training they need, by developing content tailored to different life stages and supporting the training of instructors and the operation of courses.

"With the Gyeongnam meeting, we have established labor education councils in nine regions this year," Lee said. "We will closely weave the labor education network so that the cooperation system built with each regional labor-management-government council leads to real change in the field and contributes to realizing a society that respects labor."