I have seen this happen at a company I used to work. They gave layoff notices and *then* decided who to keep, to fullfil existing contractual obligations. This was in MD. In MD, if you lay-off more than > X% of your work-force (forget what X is), you have to give 2 months advance notice. So if it’s a large number and they just want to fullfil existing obligations, the trick is to give 2 months notice and the start to figure out who is abssolutely required. That buys them some time. May be that’s not the case here, but it’s probably something similar.
