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Some 4,000 nurses went on strike 7 a.m. Thursday, and plan to strike a full 24 hours, according to the California Nurses Association.
The nurses' contracts have been in negotiations for months, but discussions have reached an impasse, CNA spokesman Charles Hardy said.
He alleged that management is placing profits above patient safety, including by demanding that nurses forgo paid sick days.
"It's outrageous, it's reckless and it's dangerous," CNA spokesman Charles Idelson said, noting that the strike is necessary because of the severity of the concessions being sought by Sutter.
"Obviously nurses don't want to strike, they're being forced to strike so that there can be safe patient care every day of the year," Idelson said by phone Thursday morning.
Carolyn Kemp, a spokeswoman for Alta Bates Summit hospitals in Oakland and Berkeley, said Summit is asking nurses to make co-payments for their health care coverage but she said nurses are highly paid, earning an average of $136,000 per year.
She said nurses at Alta Bates Summit campuses have received a 22 percent salary increase over the last three years.
Idelson said dozens of bargaining sessions have already taken place, and that Sutter is now demanding fewer concessions than it was initially.
"Minute progress has happened," Idelson said. "We're going to continue to press them, we're going to escalate in every way possible."
Although the nurses plan to return to work Friday, Sutter has brought in replacement nurses on five-day contracts and will not allow the striking nurses to return to work until Saturday. The replacement nurses will be paid for five days but will only work two days.
Idelson said nurses were prepared for the possibility that they could be shut out longer than the duration of the strike.
Noon rallies are scheduled to take place at Vallejo's Sutter Solano, Antioch's Sutter Delta and Berkeley's Alta Bates hospitals, and a 2 p.m. rally is scheduled on the Peninsula, according to the nurses association.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
