Short answer. Three months at most. Article 73 defines learners as trainees in semi-skilled and other non-apprenticeable industrial occupations that may be learned through practical training on the job in a relatively short period which shall not exceed three months. It is a ceiling, not a renewable term.
What the law says
Learners are persons hired as trainees in semi-skilled and other industrial occupations which are non-apprenticeable and which may be learned through practical training on the job in a relatively short period of time which shall not exceed three (3) months.
Labor Code, Article 73 — Learners Defined. Read the full provision →
The limit is built into the definition
The Code does not impose a maximum on learnership from outside; it writes the maximum into what a learner is. Learners are persons hired as trainees in semi-skilled and other industrial occupations which are non-apprenticeable and which may be learned through practical training on the job in a relatively short period of time which shall not exceed three (3) months. The consequence is worth spelling out: an arrangement running past three months is not an over-long learnership. It is an arrangement that no longer answers the definition of one at all.
Which occupations can be learnerships in the first place
Three qualifiers narrow the field. The occupation must be semi-skilled or otherwise industrial, it must be non-apprenticeable, and it must be genuinely learnable on the job in a short period. That third element is a fact about the trade, not about how quickly an employer would like the training done. And the second sorts learnership from apprenticeship cleanly: work requiring more than three months of practical training with theoretical instruction is apprenticeable, and so cannot be run as a learnership no matter what the paperwork is titled.
The two-month point inside the three
The ceiling is not the only date that matters. Article 75 provides that learners allowed or suffered to work during the first two months shall be deemed regular employees if the training is terminated by the employer before the end of the stipulated period through no fault of the learners. So an employer who ends a learnership early, for its own reasons, does not simply release the learner — it may find it has a regular employee. That makes the decision to cut a learnership short a more consequential one than employers generally treat it as.
What to check about your own arrangement
Start with the written agreement and the duration it stipulates, then compare it with the dates you actually worked and with what you were actually doing. Two mismatches are worth flagging: a period that has quietly run beyond three months, and duties that look like ordinary production work rather than training in a defined semi-skilled occupation. Keep the agreement, your payslips and a note of your daily tasks. The strength of any later argument about what the arrangement really was comes from that comparison.