Labor Activists Rally For Terminated Worker

With only a week’s rest since their last public protest, labor activists took up their usual position in front of the Holyoke Center yesterday afternoon for a small, rainy rally in support of a former Harvard employee charged with stealing a drill from the biological animal laboratory in which he worked.

Kevin Ronchetti, a 33-year-old Arlington resident, was arrested in July for allegedly stealing the drill from a contractor who was working on the electrical system in the lab. He is contesting the charges against him and the subsequent termination of his employment at the University.

His trial will be held at the end of January, according to his mother, Alice Ronchetti.

Kevin Ronchetti, who did not attend yesterday’s rally because he was banned from Harvard property after his termination, did not return repeated requests for comment. His mother, meanwhile, who has been employed as a staff assistant in the animal lab’s academic office for seven years, spoke on his behalf, accusing lab director Javier Balloffet and Mark O’Donnell, head of animal resources, of framing her son out of spite.

While most of the posters displayed at yesterday’s rally attempted to deal broader, unrelated blows to the administration, boasting such slogans as “Layoff Larry” and “Union Busting is Disgusting,” some took direct aim at Balloffet. One poster, for instance, called the director a “Rogue Boss” and a “Frame Artist.”

Balloffet did not return requests for reaction yesterday, but University spokesman Joe Wrinn defended Harvard’s employment practices.

“Indeed, it is important to bring to light the fact that charges essentially identical to those made at today’s rally have already been investigated and found to be without merit by the federal agency responsible for investigating workplace safety, OSHA,” Wrinn wrote in an e-mail.

The crowd of 30 assembled at Holyoke consisted primarily of dissatisfied members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) and advocates of the local chapter of Socialist Alternative. A few of the more visible activists handed out campiagn literature, while most of the protestors walked in a large circle chanting.

According to Ronchetti’s mother, who marched along with the protestors, her son’s supervisors learned of the missing drill on July 30 and confronted him about it later that day. When he denied stealing the drill, Alice Ronchetti said, the two supervisors asked him to open his locker. When he refused, O’Donnell and Balloffet called the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and opened the locker.

The drill was there, but according to his mother, Ronchetti says he does not know how it got there.HUPD officers at the scene placed Ronchetti under arrest and took him to their headquarters.

Ronchetti was released on bail on Aug. 1, and arraigned on a charge of larceny. Two days later he was fired from his job.

According to Alice Ronchetti, the supervisors claim to have a videotape of him committing the theft, but they have not shown it to Ronchetti or his lawyer.

Alice Ronchetti and Karen O’Brien, his union representative, said his troubles at the laboratory go beyond the accusation of the stolen drill.

Four years ago, O’Brien said, Ronchetti suffered an allergic reaction to the mice feces he was working with in the same animal laboratory from which he was fired this summer. When doctors told him he could no longer work around the feces, O’Brien said, Balloffet was slow to provide Ronchetti with the protective gear he needed.

At the time, Alice Ronchetti said, her son appealed to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which forged an agreement with Balloffet to provide the gear.

Although relations improved after the appeal, Alice Ronchetti said Balloffet has had a vendetta against her son ever since.

Wrinn characterized the allegations against Harvard as “so far from the truth that they cannot go without response.”

“Although we prefer not to discuss the details of specific cases, we can say categorically that Harvard does not force its employees to work in unhealthy conditions, nor does it withhold or ignore treatment for work place injuries, nor does it accuse workers of crimes without a solid basis, nor fire them because they exercise their rights to unionize and concerted activity,” he wrote in an e-mail.

O’Donnell, Ronchetti’s other supervisor, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.