18,000 Calif. nurses on strike over lack of Ebola protective gear, 100,000 set to strike on Wednesday

Thousands of registered nurses began a two-day strike in several states across the U.S. to demand better equipment for handling Ebola patients.

As many as 18,000 nurses walked off the job at Kaiser Permanente hospitals Tuesday to picket at the company's Northern California headquarters, amid strained union contract talks.

Kaiser will remain open during the strike, though some elective procedures and routine appointments may be rescheduled, company officials said. Replacement nurses are in place, union officials said.

"This seems awfully quick to go to a strike," says Joanne Spetz, an economics professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing, according to NPR. "I can't recall a situation where a strike has come up where there has not been some kind of disagreement about wages and benefits as part of the package."

"The union is in contact negotiations with the hospitals they are striking. They are using Ebola as a ruse," she said Monday, according to NBC Bay Area News.

Kaiser said in a statement that there would be no impact on patient services nor the emergency department. Deborah Raymond, a senior vice president and area manager for Kaiser San Francisco, said a contingency plan was immediately created when the CNA gave its 10-day strike notice.

On Wednesday, some 100,000 registered nurses and nurse practitioners across the country are going on strike, picketing or holding rallies and candlelight vigils as part of a national "Day of Action" to protest their lack of protective gear and training for taking care of Ebola patients. 

"It's a women's issue," says RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, or NNU, the nation's largest nurses union, which represents 185,000 registered nurses. "If this were a [predominantly] male profession, the dialog would be different."