Heritage Bank of Commerce California Layoffs 2026: What Employees Should Know

What the filing says

These are the details as Heritage Bank of Commercereported them to the state. The EDD publishes every notice, and these figures come from the state's report as retrieved on Aug 13, 2026. All 12 are listed below; the table scrolls.

How much notice the law requires

California's WARN Act requires 60 days of advance written notice before a covered mass layoff, and its only statutory exception is a physical calamity or an act of war — far narrower than federal law's three. Who is covered and how the thresholds are counted is in our California WARN Act guide.

Heritage Bank of Commerce severance: what to check before you sign

A severance offer is not the notice pay the WARN Act describes. Severance you were already promised — in a contract, a handbook, or a union agreement — cannot be used to satisfy that obligation, though Labor Code section 1402 does let an employer reduce a back-pay award by voluntary payments it was never required to make. A release may also give up more than you expect. Justin reviews severance agreements before workers sign. What to check before you decide is in our full guide to the California WARN Act.

Two things worth doing this week either way. File for unemployment now — WARN money does not reduce it, and the filings here run through Apr 17, 2026, so you do not have to wait for your last day. 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. Every notice on this page falls after that date. If you kept your copy, read it against the full six-item checklist in our WARN Act guide — everything federal law requires, whether transition help is being coordinated, working contact details for your workforce board and for the employer itself, and CalFresh information.

Source: Labor Code section 1401, as amended by SB 617, effective January 1, 2026. A notice missing something from that list is not automatically a violation with a remedy attached — whether a gap matters depends on the employer, the action, and what else happened.

Questions people are asking

Where a layoff can raise a legal question

A layoff is lawful on its own, and nothing below is a statement about Heritage Bank of Commerce. These are the places California law can still come into play, depending on the facts of your own situation.

• The severance you were asked to signA release can give up claims you did not know you had, and the terms are sometimes negotiable.
• How you were selectedA reduction in force still cannot be used to cut someone for a protected reason such as age, disability, pregnancy, or a complaint they made.
• Your final paycheckCalifornia sets when final wages are due at termination, and unpaid time or accrued vacation can carry penalties on top of the wages.
• The length of the notice periodWhere a notice period turns out to fall short of what the law required, the question usually belongs to everyone in the same position rather than to one person.

General information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

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.

Bay Area News Group reported that Heritage Bank of Commerce decided to eliminate 121 jobs in the Bay Area and San Benito County effective April 17 in the wake of its agreement to be bought by another bank, with the vast majority of the cuts — 97 jobs — at the bank's corporate headquarters at 224 Airport Parkway in North San Jose.

Planned cuts at the branches were five jobs in San Mateo, four each in Walnut Creek and Danville, three each in San Rafael and San Francisco, and one each in Oakland, Livermore, Los Altos, Morgan Hill and Hollister, and the job cuts were described as permanent, according to the report.

In December, Heritage Commerce Corp. and CVB Financial, owner of Citizens Business Bank, announced an $811 million deal whereby Heritage would be merged into CVB Financial, and corporate mergers often trigger job losses from redundancies, Bay Area News Group reported.

Sources: Bay Area News Group via The Press Democrat (opens in a new tab) · Citizens Business Bank (opens in a new tab)

What the numbers show

• The filings name 11 California locations, including Livermore, Oakland, Danville, Walnut Creek, San Rafael and Hollister.
• They cover 11 separate addresses rather than a single site, so co-workers at different locations may have received different dates.
• The shortest gap between notice and last day here is 49 days, against a statewide median of 61 days across every notice on file.
• By headcount it sits in the top 35% of the 599 employer layoffs tracked here.
• The 121 workers leaving Heritage Bank of Commerce re-enter a job market where Santa Clara County unemployment stood at 4% in June 2026, below the 5.2% statewide rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted).
• All 12 notices are dated within a single month, February 2026, which reads as one event reported site by site rather than a rolling reduction.

These are counts and comparisons drawn from the published filings, not findings about Heritage Bank of Commerce.

Free job-search help near the affected sites

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; these are the closest to the sites in these filings.

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 Santa Clara County around the same time

73 employers have WARN notices on file in Santa Clara County, covering 11,472 workers. These filed within about a quarter of this one.

• eBay469 workers
• Lucid Group, Inc.455 workers
• Snap Inc.320 workers
• Supernal, LLC296 workers
• Primary School294 workers
• Lodging Dynamics Hospitality Group, LLC278 workers

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

California wage claims filed against Heritage Bank of Commerce

California employers face claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which lets an employee sue for civil penalties over Labor Code violations on behalf of the state. The state publishes every filing. One PAGA case naming this employer is on that record, including the settlements below.

These are outcomes in other people’s cases, obtained by other lawyers, taken from the state’s public filing record. They are not results of this firm, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. What any individual recovers depends on their own hours, pay records, and dates.

• Proposed settlement · 2025

  $8,000,000

  Current and former employees of Heritage Bank of Commerce in California reached a proposed settlement of claims that they were not paid all wages, including overtime, were not provided required meal and rest periods, were not reimbursed for business expenses, and were not given accurate wage statements. The settlement also addresses claims that some employees were misclassified as exempt from overtime, and that employees who worked from home during the pandemic were not paid for all time worked. The settlement resolves the lawsuit without any admission of liability by the employer.

  Covered All persons employed by HERITAGE in the State of California within the CLASS PERIOD, including (but not limited to) temporary employees. The settlement resolved class claims as well as PAGA penalties.

  Attorneys' fees

  $2,800,000

  To the state (LWDA)

  $56,250

  Superior Court of the State of California, for the County of Alameda · RG20080970 · Heritage Bank of Commerce denied liability; a settlement is not an admission.

A PAGA case is not a class action, and there is nothing to opt out of. A PAGA settlement resolves civil penalties owed to the state — most of which the state keeps — and it does not necessarily resolve your own unpaid wages, missed break premiums, or final-paycheck penalties. If you worked here and were not paid correctly, that is a separate question worth asking about. How California wage claims work.