The U.S. steel industry was hit hard in the 1980s, primarily by more profitable domestic mini-mills and improved steelmaking technologies overseas. Competitors with lower labor costs also put pressure on legacy U.S. steelmakers.

Prior to that time, steelworkers never anticipated the prospect of concessions nor reflected on the damage some union work rules were inflicting on companies’ ability to make a profit and survive. They didn’t consider the consequences of their companies’ failure to modernize.

Some steel companies of that era are only memories now.

What happened in the steel industry is not going to happen to Pennsylvania public schools. School districts won’t shut down because of the financial hardships they increasingly are being forced to bear.

But like in the steel industry, which gave its workers overly generous contracts decade after decade, school employees increasingly are going to feel the impact of difficult financial times. The 2011-12 state budget, which cut about $930 million from state education spending, likely is a harbinger of similar things to come.

The experience of this fiscal year, which began July 1, isn’t likely to be a one-year anomaly.

It’s unfortunate that the Legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett saw no alternative but to cut the $930 million. Not only did that create difficulties for school districts in terms of balancing their 2011-12 budgets but, in some cases, also has meant larger class sizes because of fewer teachers.

While the state funding cut was unfortunate from the educational perspective, it was not necessarily so in the eyes of many people looking at the entire educational picture.

Many believe that the impact on teaching positions and other employees resulting from this year’s state and school district budgets could have been less drastic if school employees, especially teachers, would have, over the years, been more reasonable in their contract demands.

Just like in the 1960s and ’70s, when steelworker wages and benefits were going up and up and up while workers in other sectors of the economy were receiving much less, over the past 40 years, since the passage of the state’s Public Employees Bargaining Act, teachers’ wages have been spiraling upward, with few districts attempting to control that spiral.

In the end, property tax payers were the ultimate victims.

Prior to the steel industry’s hard times, steel companies and their employees didn’t have the foresight to envision the kind of spending controls needed for tougher times.

With the undermining influence of cheaper steel, cost-cutting became a necessity. Rounds of concession demands followed, then came job losses.

The tough stance by Corbett and the Legislature to carve out a balanced 2011-12 budget, with education bearing part of the burden, created a different ballgame for school districts that has produced troubling — but necessary — results.

An article in Monday’s Butler Eagle reported that about 100 teaching positions remain unfilled in Butler County school districts as a result of spending cutbacks. Those districts reported more than 80 other non-teaching positions unfilled as well.

The 294 school districts that responded to a statewide survey — the state has 500 public school districts — reported that they’ve lost 8,365 employee positions, including 3,556 teachers.

For at least 40 years, the Pennsylvania State Education Association and its member local unions didn’t envision a time when they would not be able to push excessive demands. That time has arrived.

School districts and their employees cannot continue to be paid excessive wage increases and benefits and expect the taxpayers to continue to shoulder the cost.

Property owners aren’t money trees. For the steel industry, neither were its customers.