So much for a Maui vacation

By Christie Wilson and Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Maui County Bureau

Several hundred WorldCom employees, gathered this week at Maui's Grand Wailea Resort as a reward for being top performers, had little else to do yesterday but try to enjoy the vacation setting while pondering the fate of the company and their jobs.

The company had booked 400 rooms at the luxury resort for the low-key employee-incentive event. Signs directing employees to various registration tables referred only to the "Inner Circle" and made no mention of WorldCom, the nation's No. 2 long-distance company.

Most of the WorldCom employees declined to comment. Those who spoke asked that their names not be used because they didn't want to be seen as speaking for the company.

The company — embroiled in what could be the biggest case of crooked accounting in U.S. history — announced it would begin laying off 17,000 employees Friday.

One WorldCom worker on Wailea Beach said she had been with the company for nearly 10 years and was "shocked and angry" at the news. She said workers were aware of questionable loans made to former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers, but had no idea the company was in even deeper financial trouble.

One employee wearing an aloha shirt and straw hat said he was confident WorldCom would survive.

"We're a big company with lots of assets, and still a lot of good managers,'' he said. "A lot of people here have faith in the company. They are the top performers, and most of them believe we can overcome this."