> This is nothing short of a stealth layoff

Absolutely. They should just stop pretending. They know they are lying as they say it's all about collaborating closer and communication. The workers know they are lying. They workers know the leaders know they are lying. But it's still not allowed to be acknowledged publicly.

If it really was all about collaboration and communication this would be uniformly enforced as much as possible globally and the budget to travel and in-person meetups for teams would have been greatly increased. If neither one of those is happening, it's just too obvious.