The future looks bleak for staff at Wishaw’s Thomas Cook branch after the company went under this week.
The Main Street store was among hundreds of UK premises to close permanently on Monday.
The 178-year-old travel giant was trusted by many holiday goers, many of whom lost out on trips.
Councillor Angela Feeney said she was gutted to hear of the firm’s demise and called for the workers to be treated fairly.
She said: “It is a very sad thing to happen.
“The staff were all so liked and trusted by people in the town – it will be such a sad loss.”
Last-minute talks led people to believe the holiday firm could be saved on Sunday.
However the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced early on Monday morning that the company had “ceased trading with immediate effect”.
This left more than 150,000 UK holiday makers stranded abroad with a huge repatriation effort mounted by the government.
Dozens of charter planes, from as far afield as Malaysia, have been hired to fly customers home.
Flights started on Monday, with details on flight confirmations appearing on thomascook.caa.co.uk.
Peter Fankhauser, Chief Executive of Thomas Cook said: “We have worked exhaustively in the past few days to resolve the outstanding issues on an agreement to secure Thomas Cook’s future for its employees, customers and suppliers.
“Generations of customers entrusted their family holiday to Thomas Cook because our people kept our customers at the heart of the business and maintained our founder’s spirit of innovation.”
Ms Feeney urges any staff affected by the closure to contact their union rep “immediately” to make sure they get any money back that might be owed.
