Learn English – What do you call a ‘usury’ (‘bad deal’) agreement that doesn’t involve a loan

single-word-requests

Usury is the action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest.

e.g. money lenders that prey on desperate people who need money but
who won't be able to afford to pay back the money.

Let's say you sign a work contract because you urgently need a job, but the work contract is not in your favour. Or you agree to be contracted out at low rates but you have to pay most of your income to a middleman who found you the very low paying job because of an agreement you signed since you had no other income. That's why I like the word usury. It is in religious context wrong but not wrong in legal context.

He signed a ____ work agreement because he had been unemployed for a year and was desperate and hungry.

Edit: Clarification. The agreement doesn't break any employment laws as it is casual employment through a middleman who takes 8 times what you earn. You agreed to your rate at the start of the contract.

Best Answer

I'd go with exploitative:

exploitative:

making use of a situation or treating others unfairly in order to gain an advantage or benefit.

"an exploitative form of labor"

(Oxford)

Drops in precisely in your template (after a swap from "a" to "an"):

He signed an exploitative work agreement because he had been unemployed for a year and was desperate and hungry.

It's similar in meaning to "extortionate", but it's more specific to your case of exploiting a situation, rather than "extortionate", which involves creating the situation through force or threats. You didn't impoverish the person in question, you just took advantage of their desperation.