A trend
This sounds almost exactly like what polar/DHL pulled in ANC. With the exception of a very small handfull of Atlas employees in maint/spares,, all polar ground/ops staff were let go, leaving just 1 polar employee, the "station manager".
The obvious strategy was that after the people were fired they would have nowhere else to go but to one of the ground service contractors, then polar could rehire the same people as contractors at a few $/hr lower.
Short story, the contractor (swissport) was grossly unprepared, the old "primary" contractor F&E tried to absorb the displaced ground staff having been butt-jabbed by polar. ANC ground ops are fragmented per individual contract acmi vs. dhl. And what had been a smooth operation for close to a decade is now a cluster-f*ck. 80% of polar's old staff were thrown to the curb, and polar was forced to rehire a few of the office staff back due to thier own contractors incompetence.
So, ANC is a mess, a bunch of nice people got hurt, old and trusted contractors were betrayed. polar's bean counters strike again.
Heracles, slave to carhartt fashion.