This happened in the first company I worked for. It was a big, well known engineering company, and when things started going south they had to negotiate with the state labor department to do large layoffs, which required giving financial cushions to let go employees. I was a star employee - so while everyone else was being laid off with nice, big compensation packages (like 6-12 months of salary), I was stuck in a company on fire that obviously had no future. I was, in effect, punished for being "indispensable".