Almost 5,000 nurses at 13 Bay Area hospitals affiliated with Sutter Health, a nonprofit network of hospitals and doctors’ groups, announced their plan on walking off jobs Thursday and Friday.

The California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee represent the striking nurses, who will walk off their jobs because of unresolved contract issues that union officials say involve patient care, staffing levels and health and retiree benefits. Wages are not an issue. These seem to be the same issues for the nurses’ strike in October as well, known to be the largest strike of nurses in California in a decade.

Alta Bates-Summit in Oakland, Mills Peninsula in Burlingame, California Pacific in San Francisco and Marin General were affected by the strike in October.

The hospitals plan to bring in hundreds of replacement nurses to look out for patients, so care is not going to be compromised in any way. Administrators at Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and San Mateo were forced to sign replacements to a five-day contract, forcing its regular nurses out of work until Tuesday.

"This time, we didn't have a choice," said Debbie Goodin, vice president of human resources at Mills-Peninsula Health Services, according to local media sources. He justified his statement by saying that the U.S. Nursing, the agency that is supplying the replacement nurses wanted a five-day contract to assure that it could supply the nurses.

"These strikes are costing millions of dollars, and somewhere along the line, nurses should be asking questions about the motive of the union," Goodin further said.

According to him, the strike in October cost the Mills-Peninsula group more than $1 million and that is because the hospitals have to bring nurses from other states too, train them, feed them, offer them a place to stay and make sure they are fit for the job’s requests.

Alta Bates Summit, Sutter Novato, California Pacific and Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and San Mateo, San Leandro Hospital, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, Sutter Delta in Antioch, Sutter Solano in Vallejo, St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco, Sutter Santa Rosa and Sutter Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae as well as member of the CAN/NNOC-affiliated Caregivers and Healthcare Employees Union number between the hospitals affected by the nurses’ strike.

The strike will begin at 7 a.m. on Thursday and will end at 7 a.m. on Saturday.