Nowadays though it feels like all companies care about is making more money

They always did. But previously, there was the threat of the "communist bloc" forcing employers to pay good wages. If people could not at least live decently with minimum wage, that would mean the capitalist system could be attacked. They basically had to.

The fall of the soviet bloc and opening of lots of markets, like China, not only opened new markets for foreign slaves (barely better than that in many cases), but also relieved the capitalists of the task to appease the common man so that they would not defer to socialism or communism.

Capitalism had won, whatever its form (state capitalism etc...), there is no other block to defect to, so the capitalists felt they could do exactly as they pleased without sharing the riches.