I think you mean: and could be not renewed at the end of the contract.
Not always, but depends on the contract. My first contract was to create a new network for a well-known financial institution. The project was overrunning and experiencing difficulties*, so cancelled and around 1,500 contract posts surplus to requirements. That 'job loss' didn't make the news, but that's contract life.
Depending on the contract, there may be some recourse for breach of contract, ie for terminating before a defined end-date, but contracts can be week by week, or monthly. That's just one of the risks of contracting, especially doing project work. And any recourse would mean paying lawyers, which would come out of your company's funds. On the plus side, I think it's easier to argue that kind of project work and risk of termination means it's arguably outside IR35.
*One being relying on an X.21 feature not implemented in BT's Kilostream network, the other possibly being relying on OS/2. The permie who specified the X.21 bit wasn't happy when I pointed that problem out, and remained an employee after I'd left. So it goes..
Biting the hand that feeds IT
