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Not necessarily. I worked at a company where if you missed two days of work without calling in to let them know, you were fired. You could stretch that to about 5 days if you always called in.

I'm not making a judgement as to whether those are reasonable terms, only pointing out that such jobs exist, and could be similar where this individual worked there.

We don't know if he was hungover, ill, injured, taking care of a loved one, or "just depressed". So no, not necessarily.

I think you may have missed something in the article. It does not state that the five years of work had been continuous or at the same location. It mentions multiple places they worked and that they were fired from multiple positions.

You can be fired for missing too many days of work for a legitimate illness.