They are bugged... kinda.
I made a slow recreational ship designed to relieve the crews of gas-mining operations. I noticed it wasn't working, even though it was in orbit with the ships it was supposed to service.
After reading the forums, I added a gas mining module to the ship and set it on repeating orders to harvest the same gas giant that the mining ships were working on.
At that point, I noticed that the morale of the other ships at the same location was finally going up.
I hope that helps.