Blue Diamond Growers California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as Blue Diamond Growers reported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and this page reflects the data as of Jul 31, 2026.

How much notice the law requires

California's WARN Act requires 60 days of advance written notice before a covered mass layoff. What makes the California version unusual is how few ways out it gives an employer. The only statutory exception is a physical calamity or an act of war. Federal law has three exceptions, including one for unforeseeable business circumstances, and the California Legislature deliberately declined to copy them.

Blue Diamond Growers severance: what to check before you sign

A severance offer is not the same thing as the notice pay the WARN Act describes, and an employer cannot use one to satisfy the other. A release may also give up more than you expect, and an arbitration agreement you signed at hire can affect where a dispute is heard. Read our full guide to the California WARN Act before you decide, and consider having the paperwork looked at.

Two things worth doing this week either way. File for unemployment now, because WARN money does not reduce it. And keep every document, including the notice itself and anything showing when it arrived.

What your notice was required to include

Timing is only half of what Labor Code section 1401 asks for. The notice itself has to contain specific things, and California added most of this list for notices issued on or after January 1, 2026. 7 of the 8 notices here fall after that date; the earlier ones were not subject to the new content rules. If you kept your copy, it is worth reading down this list against it.

• Everything federal law requires. A California notice has to carry all the elements the federal WARN Act calls for, including whether the action is permanent, the expected date, and whether bumping rights exist.
• Whether transition help is being coordinated. The notice must say whether the employer is arranging services through your local workforce development board, through some other organization, or not at all.
• A working email and phone number for that board, plus a short standard paragraph pointing you to an America's Job Center of California for help with a resume, interview practice, job searching, and training programs.
• Services arranged within 30 days. If the employer said it would coordinate services, the statute gives it 30 days from the date of the notice to actually set them up.
• CalFresh information. A description of the CalFresh food assistance program, the benefits helpline, and a link to the CalFresh website.
• A working email and phone number for the employer. Not a no-reply address — a route back to a person.

Source: Labor Code section 1401, as amended by SB 617 (Stats. 2025, ch. 229), effective January 1, 2026. A notice missing something on this list is not automatically a violation with a remedy attached, and this page does not say that it is. Whether a gap matters depends on the employer, the action, and what else happened.

Questions people are asking

What has been reported

Press coverage of this layoff, summarized and attributed. This is reporting rather than the filing itself, and we did not independently verify it.

Blue Diamond Growers is closing its 50-acre C Street manufacturing plant in Sacramento in phases and consolidating production into its Turlock and Salida facilities, National Nut Grower reported. About 600 of the roughly 632 employees at the site are affected, with layoffs running in three phases: September 2025, March 2026, and a final round in September 2026.

President and CEO Kai Bockmann said "the challenges of running a plant from these historical buildings has become too costly and inefficient," according to National Nut Grower. The cooperative's corporate headquarters will remain in Sacramento.

Sources: National Nut Grower (opens in a new tab) · AgNet West (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The 280 affected positions are in Sacramento.
• They cover 2 separate addresses rather than a single site, so co-workers at different locations may have received different dates.
• Every notice is filed as a closure rather than a partial reduction, meaning the sites themselves are shutting down.
• The jobs do not all end on the same day. The filings list 8 separate last days of work, running from September 1, 2025 to September 4, 2026.
• At least one notice here is dated 100 days after the last day of work it reports. Notices are sometimes filed or amended after the fact, so this describes the paperwork rather than when anyone was told.
• Within Sacramento County, this accounts for 8% of all workers covered by WARN notices on file, across 31 employers.
• By headcount it sits in the top 10% of the 593 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The EDD records the employer's sector as Manufacturing.
• The 280 workers leaving Blue Diamond Growers re-enter a job market where Sacramento County unemployment stood at 4.8% in June 2026, below the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
• The filings arrived in 5 separate months between December 2025 and July 2026 — a rolling reduction rather than a single event. The heaviest was June 2026, when 3 notices covered 189 jobs.

These are counts and comparisons drawn from the published filings, not findings about Blue Diamond Growers.

Free job-search help near Sacramento

America's Job Center of California is the state's no-cost network for laid-off workers: help filing and keeping unemployment benefits, federally funded retraining, and résumé and interview coaching. Your WARN notice may name one; this is the closest to the site in these filings.

• Asian Resources, Inc. (ARI) AJCC (opens in a new tab)

  2411 Alhambra Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95817 · 916-324-6202

  Affiliate center (partial services) · about 2 miles from the Sacramento site

Locations and hours change — confirm before visiting, or find another center with the EDD's center locator (opens in a new tab). Directory: U.S. Department of Labor, Jul 31, 2026; distances are straight-line from the address in the filing.

Other layoffs filed in Sacramento County around the same time

31 employers have WARN notices on file in Sacramento County, covering 3,478 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• Amazon6,938 workers
• Educational Testing Service757 workers
• Wells Fargo141 workers
• FPI Management, Inc.105 workers
• New Punch Bowl Sacramento, LLC83 workers
• Omnicare64 workers

Listed because they appear in the same county in the same public data. No connection between these employers is implied.

Other Manufacturing layoffs in California

Employers the EDD lists in the same sector with WARN notices on file statewide.

• Phillips 66298 workers
• LeeMAH Electronics212 workers
• Ventura Coastal210 workers
• Eargo, Inc.57 workers

Grouped by the industry the EDD recorded on the filings. No connection between these employers is implied.