I once worked at a small tech startup. It was the owner, another guy and me. The owner was a nice guy and fairly good at the conceptual work he did but he was not good at running a business and he hired some really incompetent people to do bookkeeping and payroll. He didn't know much about the rules and practicalities of employing people, for instance we didn't have any form of pension payments (very unusual here) and he felt proud of himself for offering paid vacations, although he was legally required to do so. It often happened that someone fucked up so we wouldn't get our salaries on time.

Business was bad and money were low. Payday came and no money were being paid. The owner asked if we could wait a month to get paid. I've had it then. He'd done this to us one before and it had been horrible. I went to my union right away whose lawyers threatened him with bankruptcy if he didn't pay up. That helped, a week later he had talked his friend into pouring his savings into the company and he had my money.

Half a year later the company went bankrupt. The moral of the story is to join a union. Also, never stay somewhere that can't make payroll, if their finances are that fucked they're on their way down.