Click the audio player above to hear Tate Publishing President Ryan Tate give warnings to staff.

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/dave-rhea/tate-publishing-meeting/s-B6bY6[/soundcloud]

MUSTANG – Christian book and music publisher Tate Publishing & Enterprises fired 25 people on Thursday amid rumors the company plans to lay off most of its staff in favor of outsourcing work to the Philippines.

Tate Publishing President Ryan Tate said the company is opening an office in the Philippines, but denies there are any layoffs planned. He said the 25 workers who lost their jobs Thursday were terminated for breaching confidentiality agreements in their employment contracts after leaking rumors about the outsourcing.

The family-owned company, which was named one of the best places to work in Oklahoma in 2008 and 2009 by okcBiz magazine, employs about 200 people at its Mustang offices.

Tate, son of Tate Publishing founder Richard Tate, announced the firings this week at a company meeting that began with a prayer.

An anonymous email sent to Tate Publishing employees over the Memorial Day weekend criticizing Ryan Tate for the alleged layoffs sparked the group firing, he said.

“This is all disciplinary actions – it’s nothing to do with the company or outsourcing,” Ryan Tate told The Journal Record on Thursday. “It saddens me in this day and age, and in this economy, that anybody would have the stupidity to not understand an employee contract they’ve signed.”

Becky Julian, executive director of the Mustang Chamber of Commerce, said she was unaware of any plans for layoffs at Tate Publishing and that the company has expanded its Mustang workforce steadily over the past several years.

Tate Publishing employees claim the company will lay off much of its staff in Mustang by the end of July. The employees did not want to be identified because they fear retaliation from their employer.

“Most of us are already actively looking for other jobs,” said one Tate employee. “We know most of us will be gone by July 31, but they need us to stay until then.”

Rumors about layoffs began to spread among the staff after the company announced the plan to open an office in the Philippines this month, another Tate Publishing employee said.

“There is a lot of bitterness and a lot of people who are very upset,” the worker said. “We’ve all enjoyed working together very much. We work in a wonderful department, with wonderful people for an awful, awful company.”

A search of several job websites on Thursday turned up several listings from Tate Publishing seeking editors and book cover designers in Cebu City in the Philippines. The ads said Tate planned to open an office there in May.

Ryan Tate declined to say how many people Tate Publishing will hire in the Philippines, but said the new office is for an expansion into the Asian market and would not result in any cuts at the company’s Mustang office. The publisher also will eventually open offices in China and Australia to grow its business abroad, he said.

Ryan Tate said the 25 people who were fired on Thursday will be replaced with 25 new workers at the company’s Mustang office, but later said some of the firings were due to changes in the company’s production demands.

Adam Childers, a Crowe & Dunlevy attorney who specializes in employment law, declined to comment specifically on the situation at Tate Publishing, but said Oklahoma’s status as a right-to-work state puts the law on the side of most employers who decide to terminate their workers – for any reason.

“Theoretically, you can fire somebody for any reason or for no reason whatsoever, but there are limitations if something violated federal statute or a public policy,” Childers said. “It doesn’t authorize all terminations, just most.”

In a recording of an employee meeting held this week obtained from a Tate employee by The Journal Record, Ryan Tate threatened to sue staff members and file liens against their houses and cars if they violated their employee contracts by talking to the media or sharing information about the company on Facebook and Twitter.

In the recording, Ryan Tate said he would fire 25 production workers after no one came forward to take responsibility for the anonymous email sent out to employees on Sunday that decried the rumored layoffs.

“Good people are going to lose their jobs – it’s not fair,” Ryan Tate said in the recording. “It’s not right, but that’s the reality of the situation. Jesus himself is the perfect mix of mercy, grace and justice. I have probably failed you in that I have been a little too lenient and a little too on the side of mercy and grace and not on the side of justice.”

At the meeting, Ryan Tate then went on to say several employees had already been named as defendants in a $7.8 million lawsuit for breaching their employee confidentiality agreements. A search of state and federal court filings revealed that no such litigation has been filed as of Thursday, a fact Ryan Tate later confirmed. However, the company is considering suing several of its former and current employees for contract violations, he said.

“I will root this out,” Ryan Tate told his employees in the recording while announcing the firings. “I will clean this from our staff and I will not stand for it. If I was you, I’d get on a mission to find who cost you your job. Hopefully, the grass is greener on the other side.”