Wow! PHB, when did he start making such deep statements? Hats off to you Scott - once again of course.
The tensions of mergers is something only those who have gone through would understand. And strangely, at least on one occasion what I experienced was the job losses were at the acquiring company and not the acquired (merged) company!
So they disbanded my section, promoted my staff to the same level I was and said they couldn't promote me since I no longer had staff but still did three times the amount of work. They said, "Well, at least you still have a job."