sorry Deploy I missed that you were not in the UK, in which case depending on where you are I might agree with you!
I feel I HAVE to respond to the comments below.
Visiting (local) friends in the Middle East who were wealthy and had three servants from SE Asia. I'd have used a better word but they were treated like servants and that shocked me. We mostly met outside the house but on the few occasions we went to their house I was horrified that these women were expected to silently wait on them hand and foot - no one in the family said thank you to them for, e.g., clearing cups away or even acknowledged they were in the room unless it was to tell them to do something.
Oh god, the servant culture of the Middle East. I knew it existed, but I assumed that ill treatment happened behind closed doors, because surely you wouldn't openly abuse and exploit someone?
Nope. Local acquaintances openly talking about their maids being forbidden to leave the house ("because the last one ran off"), issuing instructions to young women from SE Asia (who are forced to buy domestic uniforms from their own wages) without making eye contact let alone saying please or thank you, passport confiscations. A small boy fell over in the playground last weekend, and understandably cried for his mother. His mother actually checked to see that the nanny was busy before going to him herself. Every time I think I've adjusted to how batshit mental it is, someone excels themself.
God, yes to all of this. I once saw a small child fall into a pool at a party in Dubai, and his mother shouted to their housemaid (let's not go along with calling them the 'nanny', when it's seldom if ever true) who was collecting glasses to jump in and get him out. When I was probably goggling at her like a codfish, she did a sort of slightly self-conscious smirk, and gestured down at her outfit. Presumably I was supposed to grasp that she didn't want to wet her clothes, whereas the maid, clad in one of those pastel trousersuit uniforms, wouldn't mind.
'Oh, they're happier sleeping on a mat on the floor - it's their culture) and apparently genuinely thinking they're being 'savvy' when they pick up maid tips from people who've lived there longer e.g.:
'I change my maids every year. I find it keeps them on their toes. The ones that stay longer get slack.'
'Just call an agency and ask them to email you some maid cvs. Print them off and put them on your desk. She will see them, for sure, and will not be able to contain herself. She will ask if you are replacing her. Then you can say that you were waiting to see if she could get more done and to your liking. That will get her back on her toes.'
And when one British 'madam' had had a conversation with her maid who was upset because of the suicide of a friend (who'd been a maid in Saudi impregnated by her employer), she was told 'Maybe you should change your maid for a more positive one.' (Actual quotes.)
And these people will have been until very recently ordinary lower-middle-class Brits living in suburban semi-detached houses in Nuneaton or Birmingham.
Right. I have lived for quite a few years in the sort of environment you all describe, as have many of my friends in many countries where it is commonplace to employ domestic help; Africa, Asia and the ME. I can honestly say, in all the scores and scores of women I have met and mixed with of many, many nationalities and backgrounds who have had domestic live-in help (including myself) I have NEVER ONCE experienced ANYONE (or at least anyone who might be described as white and western) treat their staff in any of these ways. All of you have trotted out a well worn list of cliches that in my experience just do not bear up to my actual first hand knowledge and personal observations. There are occasionally grains of truth in some of the things said, but they tend to get bloated and exaggerated out of all recognition to me, so that monsters are created to serve the purposes of people who like to tell these stories about us 'spoilt' bratty expats.
Plenty of domestic workers do get treated exactly as you describe, but I'd say it's almost EXCLUSIVELY by Arabs, Egyptians, Iranians, Pakistanis, or other ME/African/Asian people from (almost always) Muslim cultures. And they have been born to having staff and don't see it as a privilege but a birthright fitting of someone of their social standing. Actually, relatively speaking, they are not always even that well off or high born, they are just arrogant, proud and entitled, and if someone else is poor they are there to be exploited.
Occasionally - and this isn't going to go down well but it's the truth as I see it so I am going to say it anyway - you will come across someone who has a British or Canadian or American passport but who is of Muslim culture even if they've lived most or all of their lives in the country of their citizenship. They can tend to 'revert to type' once they start mixing with lots of other Arab and/or Muslim expats and they seem to quickly lose (if indeed they ever had) the same sense of morality or guilt or shame when it comes to treating their staff less well than basic decency dictates to us that we should.
For example it's not unusual to see maids working on Fridays which should be their only (contracted) day off. But the 'madams' seem to figure that as they can't be trusted to go out alone anyway, what's the point of a day off? If they are home they may as well work and mind the children while they enjoy time with their husbands.
They very much buy into the 'can't let her out of the house unchaperoned, she'll be on the game before you know it and she'll bring the police to our door or end up pregnant' or 'must keep hold of her passport in case she absconds with all our jewellery' line of thinking.
Actually all those things happen, not often, but more often than some of you lot might like to believe, but almost everyone I know takes the view that it's the risk you take for being privileged enough to have staff, it's not a reason to be a cunt to them and deny them basic freedoms.
The only people I know personally who don't bother to say please and thank you while their maids fetch and carry coffee and sandwiches are British Pakistani and Canadian Syrian friends, much to the bewilderment and slight irritation of the rest of us. The vast majority of other 'western' women I know wouldn't even ask their maids to serve drinks and food to their friends. It seems ludicrously grand and pretentious. If someone comes for food and drink at our house we do it ourselves. A bit of help prepping in the kitchen beforehand is the most we expect, because frankly that's what they are there for.
Honestly, I do not know ONE SINGLE 'western' non-Muslim sponsor family (and I've known probably a couple of hundred over the years) who does, or condones any of the things you've described. They all pay their helper well over the minimum legal rate, they never fail to give them at least one day off but often two, allow them to go out and socialise with their friends, to come and go without permission or prior arrangement (within reason, once the day's jobs are done) allow them to take private work on the side to earn more money if they wish to, many have boyfriends and I know of some sponsors (me included) who allow their boyfriends to stay over at weekends or when we are away on holiday. I have never seen anything that comes close to abuse or mistreatment ever, in all the years I've lived this live. But I hear about it. Always Arabs though - always.
As for the sleeping on a mat on the floor...well I don't do it, my maid's room is big enough for a proper bed and would never move into a house that didn't have an generously sized room for her, but many maid's rooms are little more than large cupboards. They are still building (enormous) houses like this now, which makes my blood boil. All that excess space and you expect people to put their helper in a cupboard? 
But many people (again, mostly Arabs) have no problem with this whatsoever, they don't give a stuff, hence why the builders get away with it. A proper 'western' sized bed wouldn't fit in those rooms even if you wanted it to and if your employer has chosen and paid for your house (as is common with teachers for example) then you are stuck with that, if it's your only spare room and you need a nanny/maid because you work, then there they must go. But given they don't expect better/bigger and haven't always come from better/bigger, the people who are often most freaked out by it are us!
The simple fact is IT IS TRUE that many of them come from cultures where a padded mat on the floor is absolutely the norm, and may even possibly be their preference in some cases. It doesn't 'other' them to acknowledge that. Just because you don't want to sleep on that and have never seen it as normal, doesn't make it beyond the pale or abnormal for someone else who has never known any different.
An analogy would be: Would you INSIST that your Sri Lankan helper uses cutlery to eat dal and rice instead of eating with her hands, because you yourself would not wish to be made to eat dal and rice with your hands? Just because you'd be a bit 
if someone didn't offer you some cutlery, doesn't mean it bothers other people who have been eating wet food with their hands their whole lives. You are making the mistake of thinking they have the same cultural expectations and preferences that you do.
I would never excuse or justify abusive treatment of domestic staff but honestly, some right old claptrap is spoken on this subject by people who have never experienced it or have just seen/heard snapshots of someone else's set up without living in that environment and fully understanding all the many complex issues that surround it.
As far as doing the 'pile of CVs' thing goes, again it's not something I've known anyone do, I've never even heard that sort of discussion, but it's a simple fact that not all maids are fabulous, selfless Cinderellas who are brilliant at their jobs. Some of them are liars, thieves, moaners, manipulators or just crap employees who will take the piss given the chance just like anyone you might encounter in any other workplace.
Sometimes someone gets the sack.
Occasionally the boss needs to get a bit assertive and that doesn't come naturally to most people who are not culturally accustomed to having domestic staff. I could see why someone struggling with managing their maid might resort to the CV thing or something similar, as a way of subtly getting the message across that they need to do better.
It's very rare in my and most of my friends' experience to have an issue where you might need to pull rank a bit, , but it's not totally unheard of. You are their boss after all. God forbid that we should expect them to have minimum acceptable levels of performance, just like the rest of you who manage an employee at work might.