Short answer. Only when three things are true together. Article 74 permits learners to be employed when no experienced workers are available, when their employment is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities, and when it does not create unfair competition in labour costs or impair or lower working standards.
What the law says
Learners may be employed when no experienced workers are available, the employment of learners is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities, and the employment does not create unfair competition in terms of labor costs or impair or lower working standards.
Labor Code, Article 74 — When Learners May Be Hired. Read the full provision →
The three conditions are cumulative
The permission is granted in one sentence and hedged three times: Learners may be employed when no experienced workers are available, the employment of learners is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities, and the employment does not create unfair competition in terms of labor costs or impair or lower working standards. The conjunction is and. A company satisfying two of the three is not most of the way there; it is outside the permission. That is a stricter framing than most employers assume when they treat learnership as simply a cheaper way to staff a line.
Scarcity, not preference
The first condition asks whether experienced workers are available, and the second whether hiring learners is necessary to prevent curtailment of employment opportunities. Both point the same way: learnership is a response to a shortage, not a hiring strategy an employer may choose because it prefers the terms. An employer with a pool of experienced applicants it would rather not pay for has not met the first condition, however genuine its commercial reasons. The provision assumes learners are being taken on because the alternative was work going undone or posts going unfilled.
The safeguard against using learners to undercut
The third condition is the one with teeth, because it looks at effect rather than intention. Employment of learners must not create unfair competition in terms of labour costs, and must not impair or lower working standards. That is aimed squarely at the pattern of replacing paid, experienced staff with cheaper trainees doing the same work — the arrangement is permitted precisely on condition that it is not used that way. Where learners appear on a line in place of the regular workers who used to staff it, this condition is the one under strain.
How the question actually gets tested
Nobody assesses these conditions in the abstract; they are tested against the establishment's own records. What did recruitment for the post look like, and who applied? What happened to the regular headcount over the same period? What are learners being paid relative to the people doing comparable work, and are they in fact doing comparable work? An employer should be able to answer those from documents before it starts. A worker who suspects the arrangement is a substitution should note the same facts as they happen.