The following are just my opinions (I think it'd be a good idea if people would start prefacing their comments this way, but that probably won't happen) :
Nobody hourly working there I've asked about this seems to know for sure, and I get the feeling even assistants themselves (I know a few of them too) are being kept in the dark about a lot of things. ... But WM could certainly do easily without them. CAP Team leads and such are already doing assistant work any way, at a fraction of the cost. Shift managers can probably go away too, they never really did do much of anything. The fact is, a bunch of very lazy people have been living high on the hog off WM's bank roll for far too long, and I think their day of reckoning is here.
Will this adversely affect the company's profits? Yes and no. Ultimately, I think it will help. WM desperately needs to shed a LOT of pork if they're going to survive.
Again----merely my thoughts ~