The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array regrets that it was unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with its union, whose members are employed by Associated Universities Inc., to establish a new collective labor contract during the negotiation period and the subsequent mediation.
As a result of the aforementioned, a legal strike began at 8:00 on August 22nd at ALMA’s installations located near San Pedro de Atacama, in the Antofagasta region, and its central office in Santiago.
ALMA has activated a contingency plan that will enable it to continue basic operations.
ALMA is confident that it will soon overcome these challenging times and continue to deliver fascinating scientific discoveries to the world.
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The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan.
ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
