That makes it sound worse. Based on what you say he wasn't paid for 2 out of 3 months. And presumably they were bringing new people on until the very end, when they must have known it might fall apart.
He fought hard to become full time, he came in as a contractor and became full time within a month. He was paid until the last day.
The contractors in the engineering team were all given option join full-time from the get go - they chose not to become full-time.
No one in engineering knew we were shutting down. We were told 2 days before shutdown. I worked until 11 pm with many team members, including my manager until the night before.