Getting maximum work from employees at minimum cost to employers has become the damaging template for far too much of business

Last Monday, the quiet, dignified voice of housebound Sally Lubanov, aged 83, told millions of radio listeners what it means to be an invisible victim of Britain's much-touted, lightly regulated, highly competitive "flexible" labour market.

Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, she explained that, although she pays for a daily 30-minute visit from a carer, that does not allow for the essentials in life. "I cannot bathe myself because I have two bad hips," Mrs Lubanov explained matter-of-factly. "I cannot change my bed… What I would like most is for people to have enough time to have a chat or to cook a hot meal and have it with you…"

According to a scathing report published last week by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), councils are forcing down the price they pay agencies to provide care for older people in their homes.

As a result, a chain of misery is in place. Demoralised carers, in practice working for far less than the minimum wage, are at times having to put older people to bed for the night in the early afternoon, leaving them unwashed in soiled sheets and even without food or water.

Extracting the maximum amount of "flexibility" and labour from the workforce at a minimum cost to employers for the short-term benefit of the shareholder has become the highly damaging template for too much of business.

Hope that the financial meltdown of 2008 would lead to a radical overhaul of the rules, a reshaping of capitalism, has long since died. Instead, in too many quarters, the wage share of the average man and woman is being driven down while companies ignore moral obligations on taxation and set aside basic human rights. The justification is the impact of globalisation and the accessibility of excessively cheap labour and the imperative to provide us, the consumers, with lower and lower prices.

This compact in which many of us are complicit works well until the hidden world behind the price tag is revealed. The £12bn-a-year Bangladeshi garment industry, for instance, employs 4 million and supplies many of our high street chains such as Mango.

In April, Rana Plaza, an eight-storey commercial building, collapsed in Dhaka. More than 1,100 died. What emerged from the ruins was a picture of slave labour in appalling conditions for wages as little as £24 a month.

Urged on by pressure groups such as the admirable Labour Behind the Label, the demand now is for greater corporate social responsibility for the global supply chain. Work by the TUC indicated that a Bangladeshi worker receives 2p from every £6 T-shirt. Increase that by 100% and profits would still be robust, but that has yet to happen.

Instead, more than 50 major chains, including Primark and Matalan, have signed the Bangladesh Safety Accord to improve conditions. Yet, still the death toll rises. Last week, fire in another Bangladeshi clothing factory killed nine. The New York Times last year exposed conditions at the Foxconn technology plant in China. Workers assembling iPads and other Apple devices often worked seven days a week, handled hazardous waste and suffered injury for very low wages.

A campaign by the Sunday Times has also highlighted modern-day slavery in the UK. People are trafficked into the country and forced to work in food factories and farms that supply our leading supermarkets.

Last year, for instance, a joint operation that included police and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) freed 32 Lithuanians, assigned by a licensed labour provider, working for Britain's largest egg-producing company, Noble Foods, suppliers to Marks & Spencer and Tesco. Often unpaid, the workers endured 17-hour shifts, slept 15 to a room and were beaten if they dissented. Such degrading practices also damp down prices and provide huge profits. So what's to be done?

More precisely, what can be done when we have passed the 40th month of a wage squeeze and are enduring a major cost of living crisis? Economist Duncan Weldon of the TUC correctly says the main issue is not in the hike in the cost of living but a widespread crisis in low pay. Four out of five new jobs created since 2010 have been in low-pay sectors such as retail, waiting and residential care. On Friday, it emerged that 29% of apprentices were paid less than the legal minimum wage in 2012. The number of apprentices paid below the correct minimum wage (£2.68 an hour for an apprentice under 19) increased by an enormous 45%. The adoption of a higher minimum wage in some sectors such as finance and levers such as procurement to encourage the voluntary living wage would help, as would stronger unions. "If we earn more, we may be prepared to pay more," Weldon says.

A modern anti-slavery bill to tackle trafficking has also been promised. Yet the powers of the GLA, set up to protect workers from exploitation for instance as fruit pickers in agriculture, have recently been diluted, presumably to assist further the deregulated market. Bringing Home the Bacon, a report published last year by Manchester University, is a rigorous investigation into the pig meat supply chain that reveals far wider problems in the whole food and farming sector worth £88bn a year. The report argues that low prices are achieved by playing suppliers off against each other, continual renegotiation of contracts, short termism and reducing margins for the "little man" while aiming to please shareholders with quarterly results.

This is the "free" market at work: competition in extremis; the upshot is that 60% of pig meat is imported and the UK is losing out to high-wage northern European producers and processors. A rebalanced higher skill, higher wage economy and tighter regulations would give long-term stability, improve productivity and exports, protect reasonably paid jobs and mean a marginal increase in prices that would still generate a fair profit.

The wage slave in Bangladesh, the worker in the British food industry, the factory employee in China and Mrs Lubanov's carers arguably share a common ambition: a decent day's pay for a decent day's work. At a global political level, the Chinese government is not alone in realising that the era of rock bottom prices and contemporary serfdom is coming to an end. Human rights have a value too. As one speaker at a recent anti-slavery conference put it: "The pot is boiling. Simply putting more weights on the lid is not a sustainable solution."