Sadly Elephant, its quite simple for employers to do this.

The easiest way is to let the employees know the company is hurting financially, so that in the following months, if it ever happens that employees do not receive their checks, they hope that the heartfelt meeting, or others like it will make the employees LESS likely to seek their paychecks immediately.

Thats what the company I recently worked for did, but on a larger, more public scale.
They didn't even need to have a "meeting" as our public stock went from 10 dollars US to less than a dollar US in 7 months

So at that point, getting paid was a luxury.

So, the moral of the story is, no matter how invested you are in a company,
be it financially, emotionally, personally, or otherwise,
NEVER, EVER, EVER think your company loves you or cares for you, or has ANY LOYALTY to you whatsoever.

This is sad but true because the company's job is to make money, and if that means screwing you, the employee, directly or indirectly, they will not hesitate to do so in order to make the REAL people they care about happy....... the investors.

Sounds harsh and cruel, but that is one of the terrible roots of capitalism, and yes, NORMALLY it works fine MOST of the time, but when it does NOT work, the employee is left holding the bag


...and thats why I switched to PORN! hehe....