Companies can no longer silence laid-off employees in exchange for severance
cnn.com
cnn.com
It depends on how often a gag clause was just throw in because it could be, and how often that was an integral part of the company's requirements.
A reason to pay more than minimum requirements is because a shitty severance won't help your benevolent public image (unless you forbid people from talking about it). I'm not sure which effect outweighs the other.
It's not clear from the article if this new ruling precludes those types of clauses. If it does then it most definitely will reduce the size and type of severance offers.
I read the article as saying that the severance agreement can't prevent you from discussing work and severance related issues with co-workers, unions or the NLRB. If the restrictions are just those then it may not have that big an impact on severance sizes.
If there weren't any bad things to talk about then people only got the minimum anyway.
This stops companies buying the silence of people who'd keep quiet for more cash, which stops bad companies who do bad things from hiding their bad things so easily and it stops people who'll keep quiet about bad things for personal profit from gaining.
That's a win win.