GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) A WARN notice filed with the State of Tennessee shows ZF Active Safety and Electronics laid off 242 people, effective March 30.

The Hawkins County plant supplies systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and industrial technology.

In the notice filed with the state, ZF Active Safety and Electronics stated the layoff is temporary.

Kingsport paper production company, Domtar, also laid off about 300 employees this week.

The recent layoffs is impacting area economies.

Small businesses play a critical role in the local economy. Those businesses rely on citizens and local employees who are at larger manufacturing plants.

“Say, if you’re tied to automotive, automotive is floating down significantly. Those furloughs or downsizing, impacts funding and personal spending, as folks either apply for unemployement or look for other jobs,” Greene County Partnership President Jeff Taylor said.

Ninety-percent of the Greene County Partnership are small businesses.

Many businesses have taken advantage of social media to encourage people to buy from their stores.

“One, for example, is Esther and Ella and Brolin & Bailey are both boutiques in our downtown area. There’s been a great promotion of pre-buy those gift cards for Christmas and Birthdays so there’s cash flow until the federal funding starts to flow through the USDA Loans,” Taylor said. “Those are the mom-and-pop family businesses that employ 1-5, 10 people. They rely on the employment of larger manufacturers. it’s a great ecosystem but unfortunately, in times like this, there is that impact. But again, I think the government has done a great job of trying to bridge that.

Taylor and other chamber of commerce leaders in the area have been trying to come up with ways to help small businesses.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve been challenged with this. If you look at the Great Recession back in 2008, 09 and 10, we got smarter and better through this crisis and we’ll get through it again,” Taylor said. “People have to be more creative and kind of going back to the basics. The worst part of this is that we are kind of not in our norm.”

He encourages people to support local restaurants through drive-thru or curbside pick-up.

The director of ETUS’s Tennessee Small Businesses Development Center, Mark Bays, said it is hard to predict how long this will last.

The center is hosting a webinar next week about Government Contracting.

Mark Bays said, “It will also depend on the small business owners getting the funding from the stimulous act in a quick and efficient manner, so they can begin taking care of those issues to help them last for the long term.”

Bays said laying off employees may be a better alternative to staying open.

Bays said, “We’re seeing the unemployement benefits also contributing to that because they’re finding a lot of their employees will have a much better opportunity with the unemployment benefit than continuing operations as is.”

Clay Walker is the CEO of NETWORKS Sullivan Partnership. He said he has been monitoring a few companies in the area and worries about people who will be getting laid off.

“To be honest, sometimes we all feel very powerless in this thing, but all you can do is come to work every day and try to come up with something or another way to help even if it’s just a little bit,” Walker said. “We do have a heavy amount of tourism here, but none the less with some of our industry sectors that are prevalent, the ability for people to work at home. We are on the better half as far as the economies being vulnerable to this kind of global event.”

Documents sent to the Virginia Employment Commission cite COVID-19 as the reason for layoffs at a Smyth County packaging supply plant.

The documents state the layoff at Scholle IPN Packaging Inc. took effect April 5 and impacted 128 people.

Columbus McKinnon Corporation in Damascus, Virginia confirmed 54 employees took voluntary leave and eight others were furloughed, due to falling demand as a result of the coronavirus. The plant told News Channel 11 it expects to bring back those employees.