My friend owns a security guard company - he employs about a dozen guards and takes on contracts that last anywhere from a day to a few years. When a guard quits or gets fired he has another one on the bench that goes and fills that role. If a guard is assigned to a construction site to watch it for a month, he isn't "fired" by the construction company when the work is done. Instead he goes back on the bench or is moved immediately to another job site.
These Cognizant employees are going back on the bench and being paid for seven weeks until they can be reassigned to another contract. https://www.kxan.com/news/youtube-music-workers-laid-off-aft...
Cognizant, Google, and the workers all knew the contract was ending today. By their own admission they had been training other people to take over the work in anticipation of the end of the contract. This was theatre.
