So imagine 500 people who know they have lost their job, are forced to show up for several months, in order to eventually collect their severance

C’mon dude… they are not “forced,” nobody is. They get to collect their salary for those months, and then a fat severance check at the end. If they are lucky enough to get a new job offer in the interim, they can always ask the new employer to either wait for the Nokia release date, or a signing bonus to match the size of the expected severance check.

I cringe when I hear journalists say that someone is being “forced” to do something. It sounds like a poor device to make a story easier to sell.