"The system we live under promotes and encourages exploitation"

Well for the last 43 years that's been successively - "the Common Market"; The EEC; the EU.

The type of contracts I referred to would be illegal in the UK, but as the contracts are signed abroad, we have no control over them and if they are legal in the country they are signed in they are enforceable. It is then EU employment laws and the rules governing free movement of labour that provides the loophole for this exploitation. EU could of course make it law that the employment law to be adhered to must be that of the country where the work will actually take place - but that has it's downsides to.