One of the things that has been only lightly touched upon:

> ... and have them demoted and/or fired to minimize severance costs ...

Tangential to this was the violation of the California and federal WARN act. Yahoo reduced the workforce by 600 employees without declaring the corresponding reduction in force under WARN acts.

If a company has 100 (federal) or 75 (California) or more full time employees that have been employed for 6 of the past 12 months and lays off 50 or more employees during a 30 day period, the employer falls into the WARN act.

This also isn't something that's new at all - its been brewing for months. http://www.californialaborandemploymentlaw.net/2016/yahoo-ac... is from March 6th.