Short answer. Article 273 punishes one narrow thing: keeping a minor in your service against his will, on the pretext of paying yourself back for a debt owed by the child's parent, guardian or custodian. It is the Code's answer to debt bondage of children.
What the law says
shall be imposed upon anyone who, under the pretext of reimbursing himself of a debt incurred by an ascendant, guardian or person entrusted with the custody of a minor, shall, against the latter's will, retain him in his service
Revised Penal Code, Article 273 — Exploitation Of Child Labor. Read the full provision →
The exact conduct punished
The article reaches anyone who, under the pretext of reimbursing himself of a debt incurred by an ascendant, guardian or person entrusted with the custody of a minor, shall, against the latter's will, retain him in his service. Every phrase is a requirement. The person kept must be a minor. The debt must have been incurred by someone else — a parent or other ascendant, a guardian, or whoever had custody of the child. The employer must be holding the child against the minor's will. And the debt must be the stated justification for keeping him. Take away any one of those and Article 273 does not apply, however unfair the arrangement looks.
The situation it was written for
This is the classic debt bondage arrangement, and it has not disappeared. A family borrows money or receives an advance, and the lender takes the child into the household or the business to work off the loan. The child receives little or nothing, cannot leave, and is told the debt is not yet settled. Because the parents agreed to it, everyone treats the arrangement as consensual. The article's answer is that the parents' consent is beside the point: what matters is that the minor is being retained against his own will to satisfy a debt he did not incur. The child's unwillingness, not the parents' agreement, is the fact the case turns on.
The penalty, and the figure printed in the text
The penalty is prisión correccional in its minimum and medium periods, together with a fine. The peso amount that appears in the printed text of this article — 500 pesos — is a figure from the Code as originally enacted in 1930, and it is a good example of why the version of the Code you are reading matters. Republic Act No. 10951 (2017) revised property values and fines across the Revised Penal Code; older reproductions still carry the 1930 amounts, and for offences like theft and estafa the difference is between thousands and millions of pesos. Before relying on any peso figure in the Code, check whether the source you have reflects RA 10951 or predates it.
What this article does not cover
Article 273 is narrow, and the danger is treating it as the whole of Philippine child labour law. It does not set a minimum working age, working hours, or wage rules for young workers — those come from labour legislation and from special laws on the protection of children, which are enforced by the labour department and carry their own, heavier, penalties. It does not punish an employer who hires a minor with the child's genuine agreement and pays him. It does not reach adults held in debt bondage, and it does not cover trafficking, which a separate special law handles and which is usually the stronger route. If a child is being held to work off a family debt, the child's own account, any record of the supposed debt and the names of witnesses are what a complaint rests on — take them to a lawyer or the proper authorities promptly.