Ok, really newbie question. But I will rather look stupid once that stay stupid forever.
When a new transaction is generated it goes into a block and then eventually that block is confirmed by miners. How does a transaction get more than one confirmation? is the whole block re-sent to miners or is the transaction repackaged in another block? and when is the transaction no longer confirmed again?
A transaction is simply distributed on the Bitcoin network.
Technically, that means it gets into the 'mempool' of Bitcoin nodes.
Any pool/miner can choose which transactions in their 'mempool' they put it in their 'block work', but until it is included in a confirmed block, it's effectively just in the 'mempool' of all the nodes that accepted it and any nodes they passed it on to.
After a period of time they may remove it from the mempool.
In our case, with the payout transaction, it's a zero fee transaction, so most pools/miners won't include it in their work, and many wont pass it on.