Ah yes, I recall such things.
I attended a somber meeting where the ones who were NOT laid off in a rif (reduction in force) were collected and told quitely and with some reverence that those outside would have to be let go - all 62 of them because there just wasn't enough money, everyone was going to have to tighten their belts and continue on short handed. What I knew that no one else there did was that the guy giving the serious talk had just gotten a 40,000 dollar bonus one week earlier.
From that point on I never trusted layoff situations. I was involved with another, where management laid folks off. They had recently been purchased by a larger company and accounting systems and end of fiscal year dates changed. It seems that upper management camped out in the accounting department late one night. When the layoffs came, one lone woman who noticed such things raised her hand and said "what happened to the year end"? She was sushed. The point was that management found out that there were 3 months of profit unaccunted for in the change, and they cut checks for themselves out of that profit - the lone noticer was laid off for... noticing that rather than keep folks on, management took the money for themselves.
She managed, however to get back at them, you see management also kept money allocated for computer programs and operating systems, prefering instead to pirate them. She dropped a dime on their asses but we suppose that the new parent company footed the bill.
No, layoffs are never what they seem.