Foreign Trainees Satisfy Employers

Foreign industrial trainees working for small and medium-sized companies are helping the companies improve competitiveness and overcome shortages of workers, the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business said Tuesday.

The business federation surveyed 1,958 companies participating in adopting foreign trainees, and 90 percent said they were more than satisfied with the system. More than 95 percent of the companies plan to take on more foreign trainees or keep the same number, and only 5 percent said they would employ fewer or stop adopting foreign trainees.

Difficulty in finding domestic workers and cheaper wages were the most cited reasons for using the foreign workers. They were said to be 80 to 90 percent as productive as domestic workers, for about 70 percent of the wage.