“The atmosphere is pretty gloomy and many of us lost motivation,” said one chip foundry worker in Pyeongtaek, declining to be identified. “It really is an ironic situation — being depressed despite receiving more money.”

There lies the unfixable cost of failing to meet your employees’ needs in a timely manner - sure their protest won and redeemed the employees and sets back towards a good course, but in that process where tolerance was finally lost, some employees will now always have doubt and hesistation with the company, because once it fails to meet our needs the first time, we must accept that it can happen a second and third time too.

The trust that, within partnership with the company, they will receive our labor in exchange for them providing the resources to meet our needs was broken, and that cant be fixed.

These companies so wantonly go bankrupt, lay off staff, not raise payment to meet increases in cost of living, etc are forever changing the social dynamic of labor - breaking each individual employee’s trust in the social contract - and its a pattern history has seen before - eventually the people stop thinking of themselves as subservient individuals and start thinking of themselves as a people worthy of having their needs met - and the downfall of that arc is not pretty for the ruling class