(Bloomberg) -- A staffing agency that serves health-care facilities in New York state was accused in a lawsuit of using hardball legal tactics to stop workers from quitting low-paid jobs.

The complaint, filed Friday by a nurse who immigrated to the US from the Philippines, is the latest to allege that employers are resorting to illegal means to trap foreign workers in assignments that burnt-out American caregivers no longer want.

Benzor Shem Vidal alleges that Advanced Care Staffing LLC placed him to work at a facility in “brutal and dangerous conditions,” including caring for 40 patients at once, and threatened him with serious financial harm if he tried to leave the company.

Under Vidal’s contract, Advanced Care Staffing could sue him in arbitration for damages if he quit within three years of starting work -- and make him pay the legal costs, according to the complaint in federal court in Brooklyn. The conditions were so onerous that they violate human trafficking laws meant to protect people from being exploited for labor, Vidal said.

“Mr. Vidal believed it was impossible for him to provide adequate care to patients but was also terrified to resign,” his lawyers wrote. “He knew that his contract with Advanced Care Staffing purported to allow the company to pursue legal action against him, with potentially ruinous financial consequences, if he decided to terminate his employment.”

Advanced Care Staffing did not immediately respond to an inquiry. The company has placed thousands of employees at facilities in New York and surrounding states, according to its website.

Friday’s suit comes among heightened scrutiny of both mandatory arbitration clauses, in which workers sign away their right to pursue cases collectively or in open court, and “employer-driven debt” arrangements, in which employees are required to compensate bosses for costs like training, or are financially penalized if they quit within a certain amount of time. 

Read More: Nurses Who Faced Fines, Lawsuits for Quitting Are Fighting Back

Hundreds of health-care employees have been sued by staffing agencies for trying to quit or refusing work, according to US state court dockets reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year.

In February, Congress passed a law preventing companies from forcing sexual harassment and assault claims into arbitration. In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced an inquiry into employer-driven debt set-ups, which its director said may “have the potential to trap employees in place.”

Vidal’s attorney David Seligman, who testified before the US Senate Banking committee this week about workplace debt schemes, said his case illustrates how companies use arbitration clauses as well as “damages” provisions to coerce their staff. 

“Arbitration is not just a shield that employers may use to insulate themselves from legal claims brought by their workers,” Seligman, who directs the legal non-profit Towards Justice, said in an interview. “Employers use arbitration as a sword -- as a way to undermine their workers, to make them feel trapped in their jobs and shift onto them additional extraordinary costs and fees, all because they have exercised their fundamental right to leave their job.”

Employees are less likely to get a fair hearing in arbitration, Seligman said, in part because employers like the staffing agencies are repeat clients. Vidal claims in his suit that the American Arbitration Association, which has been administering his case, chose an arbitrator without his input after he’d requested more time to respond, and refused his request to reveal how many other Advanced Care Staffing disputes are currently before it. 

Last year, a US federal judge ruled that a case could proceed against Health Carousel LLC, another staffing agency accused of violating trafficking law via contracts that coerce foreign nurses not to quit. The company has denied wrongdoing.

Like in the Health Carousel case, Vidal said he hopes his suit will help spur broader change in the industry. “I felt trapped,” he said in an interview. “I’m hoping that they will try to make it better.”

The case is Vidal v. Advanced Care Staffing, 22-cv-05535, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn)

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