Short answer. It is an employment contract. The Labor Code defines the apprenticeship agreement as a contract in which the employer binds himself to train the apprentice and the apprentice accepts the terms of training. Training is what the contract is about; it is not a substitute for the employment relationship.
What the law says
"Apprenticeship agreement" is an employment contract wherein the employer binds himself to train the apprentice and the apprentice in turn accepts the terms of training.
Labor Code, Article 58 — Apprenticeship Terms Defined. Read the full provision →
The definition settles the question outright
The Code does not leave this to inference. An apprenticeship agreement is an employment contract wherein the employer binds himself to train the apprentice and the apprentice in turn accepts the terms of training. It is worth pausing on the direction of the obligation. The employer's undertaking is to train — that is the thing he is bound to, and a programme that never delivers the training is a contract being broken, not merely a disappointing experience. The apprentice's side is acceptance of the terms of training, which is what marks the arrangement out from an ordinary hiring.
An apprentice is a worker, by definition
The same article defines an apprentice as a worker who is covered by a written apprenticeship agreement with an employer or a recognised entity. Two words there carry weight. Worker forecloses the argument that an apprentice is merely a student on somebody's premises. Written means the arrangement the Code contemplates is documented; where there is no written agreement at all, what exists is some other relationship, and the question of what it actually is becomes a live one rather than an academic one.
What makes an occupation apprenticeable
Apprenticeship is practical training on the job supplemented by related theoretical instruction, and an apprenticeable occupation is one requiring more than three months of that combination. So the arrangement has two components, not one. Work alone is not apprenticeship however much the worker learns by doing it, because the theoretical instruction is part of the definition. A programme consisting entirely of production work, with the training component existing only on paper, does not match what the Code describes.
Why the classification matters to you
People are sometimes engaged as apprentices because the label is assumed to reduce what the employer owes. The definition points the other way: this is an employment contract, and the training obligation is added to the relationship rather than subtracted from it. If you were taken on as an apprentice, keep the written agreement, whatever schedule or curriculum you were given, and a record of what you actually did each day. The gap between the programme described and the work performed is usually the heart of any later dispute.