News that the Tillamook Cheese Factory will eliminate 50 positions has left the community for which it is named shocked and angry.

Now, the rural hamlet known for its dairy farms and pastureland must figure out how to cope with the decision that will be felt by far more than the soon-to-be unemployed.

“I think it’s just going to have a profound impact,” said Tillamook County Commissioner Tim Josi. “There are very few family wage jobs in Tillamook. It’s going to have a ripple effect.”

The announcement to cut the positions came Thursday afternoon in a statement from the Tillamook County Creamery Association. The layoffs are expected to take place in the first or second week of February and are the result of the association moving packaging jobs to cut high transportation costs, said Harold Strunk, association president and CEO.

“Because our distribution network was in Tillamook, we would literally make cheese at our factory in Boardman then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to age, then ship the cheese to a facility in Mountain Home, Idaho, to be shredded and sliced, then ship the cheese back to the Tillamook factory to be warehoused and distributed to our customers, and then in some cases the cheese would be shipped back to Idaho to our customers there,” Strunk said in a second news release Friday.

The plan now is to ship the cheese to Mountain Home and Salt Lake City where it will be cut, wrapped and distributed. The Tillamook plant will continue manufacturing and packaging chunk cheese and distributing it to the home market.

Josi predicted a grim outlook for the workers.

“They’re not going to be able to access the health care system like they used to,” he said. “They are going to have a difficult time paying their mortgage. They’re not going to be able to shop at Rosenberg Builders Supply. A lot of them are going to have to look at moving someplace else. But they won’t be able to afford to. They won’t be able to sell their homes. They are going to be stuck here with no jobs.”

He was also upset at the way he learned the news — on television Friday morning — and questioned the company’s empathy for the community.

“Not one word of this came down to me,” said Josi, who was raised on a dairy farm and whose brother still farms. “They should have at least talked to us. The Tillamook County Creamery Association is really Tillamook based. The impact to the community should be a real big factor in whatever they decide to do. It feels like they are acting like a big business like Boeing.”