Look, we all know the company is bloated with redundancies from many past mergers, and would benefit from a moderate downsizing of some positions. But instead of rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work of identifying where to make needed cuts, management prefers to take the approach of laying off dedicated employees due to arbitrary rules such as location.
This will not be a cost savings as people with many years of experience and institutional knowledge will need to be replaced.. so the company will incur both hiring costs and severance. Most people who are remote or non-core location are highly tenured and have earned the right to work in a different location, so the people who are affected are the very same people that the company cannot afford to lose.