"Mabel sweats when she is making jam." This terse and disapproving diary entry, describing the work being done by a domestic servant, was made by the English writer Virginia Woolf. It feels dated for several reasons. Nobody gets called Mabel anymore, hardly anyone makes their own jam, and it will simply no longer do to express such snobbish views about the staff.

In her new book Mrs Woolf and the servants: the hidden heart of domestic service, Alison Light, a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle, reveals some of the prosaic realities that lay behind the Bloomsbury myth.

Virginia Woolf displayed the classic hypocrisy that bourgeois intellectuals are often seen as specialising in. She had Fine Feelings and a Tortured Soul - a history of mental illness, in fact - but was beastly to the domestics. Ms Light catalogues her many insults and put-downs: the stupid, ignorant cook and the ugly, gormless charwoman. In anticipation of a war-time air-raid, Mrs Woolf wrote: "What an irony if they should escape and we be killed."

Repetitive work, and drudgery, cannot be avoided. "There will always be washing up," as John Garnett, a venerable commentator on the workplace, used to say. But there ought to be dignity in labour. In the developed world, at least, we are supposed to have moved on from the kind of 19th century attitudes espoused by the lofty Virginia.

Today, October 7 2008, has been designated World Day for Decent Work by the international trade union movement, in support of goals first set out by the UN. "Decent work": what on earth do they mean by that?

The UN's International Labour Organisation says that decent work "sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organise and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men."

They ask a lot. Haven't they heard about the global financial crisis? Much of the industrialised world is heading for a severe downturn. Jobs are going to be lost. Never mind "decent work" - soon some people will be grateful for any kind of work at all.

Responsible managers in all sectors are tough on costs, and not only in the bad times. Job security can never be guaranteed in an open market system. And "social protection for families" will not strike many employers as being a sensible target for them to aim at.

The recent sight of (former) Masters of the Universe hurriedly gathering up their possessions and heading for the exit brought the reality home. The prospects for some domestic staff in London and New York probably aren't too good either just now. Economies are going to have to be made in the homes of unemployed investment bankers. First the nanny will have to go. And then the dog-walker. And then the personal trainer.

At a time like this it takes a brave soul to argue the case for improving the quality of working life, as opposed to just holding on to as many jobs as you can. But such brave souls do exist. David Coats and Rohit Lehki have just published a pamphlet for The Work Foundation, a London-based think-tank, called "Good work - job quality in a changing economy". In it they make the case for improving working conditions, not just for elites and "knowledge workers" but for as many people as possible.

Employees are not simply a resource or a commodity, the authors argue. "Most markets are markets in things, but the labour market is a market in people and for that reason alone it cannot simply be seen as a market like any other," they say. "To take the contrary view assumes that people are simply objects to be manipulated in the service of business objectives."

Work is good for us, but good work is better. "An individual's desire to exercise a degree of autonomy in their work is an essential ingredient of self-respect," Messrs Coats and Lehki say. "Employers who fail to observe these principles are self-evidently treating work as less than a fully human activity...Without 'good work' we are deprived of many of the capabilities we require to choose a life that we value. 'Bad work' ought therefore to be seen as a significant restriction of individual liberty."

So race-to-the-bottom employers are not really tough-minded libertarians at all: they actually limit people's freedom. This is an ingenious argument, but one that may seem more than a little idealistic to today's credit crunched executive. Some may even feel that "objects to be manipulated in the service of business objectives" is quite a good way of thinking about the staff. Doubtless Virginia Woolf would have agreed, albeit in rather more elegant terms.

But in her essay A Room of One's Own she also asked: "Is the life of the charwoman who has brought up eight children of less value to the world than the barrister who has made a hundred thousand pounds?" A good question. One that is still worth asking today.

stefan.stern@ft.comRead and post comments online at www.ft.com/sternFor the latest thinking on management and strategy, go to: www.ft.com/managementblog