Are you absolutely certain that your entire team got put on a PIP? If you are, you should take this sh-t to the local news for them to do an expose. This absolutely sounds like them gaming the PIP/corrective action system to avoid paying severance.
At will certainly does mean at will to the other commenter's point. They can fire you because they don't like your haircut if they want. But it doesn't mean they're not opening themselves up for a sh-t-storm of bad press if they do so, especially if it's done on a large scale.
It's absolutely shameful what Wayne and his McKinsey consultants have done to USAA. Wayne spends 30+ years at the same company working his way to the top. He's seen the best and worst of USAA and knows what made USAA special. Then he brings in Harvard MBA graduates with zero real-world industry experience to "advise" him. They operate in the same toxic, quarterly profit-driven mindset as publicly traded companies. USAA has always focused on strengthening its culture and focusing on the long game, and it's paid off. But the pencil pushers from these consulting firms only look at quarterly reports and base their decisions on that. It's extremely myopic.
He of all people should know what to do since he's seen it all. He's been around for like 1/3 of the company's existence for fu-k's sake.
But all Wayne knows how to do is cut expenses. That's all he's done his entire time in leadership, especially executive leadership. He comes in, strips an area to the bare bones, which improves profits in the short term, then he moves up or out and doesn't have to deal with the long-term impact of his decisions. And he's doing the same thing as CEO. He's absolutely decimated the company culture and morale, cut benefits, laid of thousands, increased premiums on members far above what our competitors have, and will soon (hopefully) deploy his golden parachute and ride off into the sunset while the rest of us deal with the wasteland he leaves behind.
Was USAA bloated? I think most who have been with the company for a while can agree that there were areas that provided no real value to the company's bottom line and were in fact actively hurting the company's long-term success. But rather than doing the right thing by moving people to areas that needed workers, Wayne decided to take the easy way out and just kick them to the curb. People who dedicated decades of their life to USAA — including veterans and people who lived and breathed the mission — were unceremoniously let go because Wayne would rather listen to some consultant who analyzed a P&L sheet for a few hours.
Someone should really do a case study on Wayne and how a single leader can undo a literal century of culture building and doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. All for the sake of short-term profits and personal enrichment. USAA will likely be profitable again this year because of how many people were let go and how drastically rates were increased. But that won't be sustainable. People will leave USAA for competitors because USAA has lost its edge. No one in their right mind is going to pay 50%+ more for their insurance for the potential to maybe get better service when/if they put in a claim.
But by that time, Wayne will be long gone. He'll be sipping a piña colada on some beach, wondering how much money he could save the beach bar by laying off the bartenders.