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About 20 workers picked up placards shortly after 5 a.m. today and began chanting and walking in a circle near the Stanford Hospital emergency room entrance under the pre-dawn glare of lights from six television news cameras. That began the one-day strike against the university and Stanford and Lucile Packard Children’s hospitals.

About 1,300 university workers and 1,400 at the two hospitals are members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 715, which has separate labor contracts with the university and the two hospitals.

Both groups are holding separate -- but mutually supportive -- one-day walkouts.

SEIU’s contract with the hospitals expired Nov. 13 and the union membership authorized a strike vote Nov. 22, prompting a federal mediator to be called in. The Nov. 22 vote was for an open-ended strike, but SEIU announced late last Thursday that it would be a one-day strike, to coincide with a one-day strike SEIU’s university workers are also staging today.

Hospital officials say the walk-out won’t affect patient care.

“We don’t know how many will walk off the job,” said Cynthia Haines, senior vice president of Packard Hospital, adding that a count will be provided later in the day. “But we’ve had contingency plans in place.”

Only “a handful” of outside workers have been brought in to replace the striking workers, Haines said. Other hospital employees are performing the functions of striking workers, she said.

The hospitals had been prepared for a longer strike, said Sarah Staley, spokesperson for the hospitals, said. “Patient care won’t be affected.”

The two hospitals have a combined 688 in-patient beds. Both hospitals are running at about 75 percent capacity, Staley said, and some surgeries scheduled at Packard Hospital have been re-scheduled.

The strike “is a last resort to get management to come back to the table by withholding our work,” said Chuck Fonseca, a nursing assistant at Stanford Hospital for 16 years and one of the pre-dawn picketers.

The hospitals have offered pay raises of 12 percent over three years under a new contract while the union is asking for 29 percent in raises over three years. The hospitals have declined to return to the negotiating table, although possible dates for a resumption of talks are being exchanged, said Greg Pullman, spokesman for SEIU’s hospital workers.