Wage talks between the state and the educators represented by the public school teachers union and the University of Hawai'i professors union are at a standstill.

This represents more than just the usual labor-management confrontation that is typical in any union negotiation. Rather, it signals a breakdown of the unspoken social contract that has guided relationships between public workers and government since public workers won the right to strike in 1968.

That right was granted by the Constitutional Convention of that year. Some commentators at the time worried that this change would disrupt the orderly process of government, throw the matter of public services into the hands of union leaders and so forth.

By and large, that didn't happen. Yes there were some unhappy moments when the public order was disrupted by public worker strikes (the United Public Workers strike in the 1970s and the 19-day strike by public school teachers in 2001). But for the most part, labor and management found ways to work things out.

Sometimes it was a matter of handshake agreements between labor leaders and top government officials that offset pay raises in the short term in exchange for promises of decent increases once the economy turned around. Other times, unions worked through the Legislature to win benefits that served as "in lieu" replacements for outright salary hikes.

Whatever, the system stumbled along and worked.

What we are seeing today may be the outlines of a breakdown in that Island-style system of give and take.

Gov. Linda Lingle has outright rejected a deal brokered between the public school teachers and the Department of Education that would have eliminated some, if not all, of the so-called furlough Friday days when schoolchildren are not being taught. Her argument: Given the budget situation, the agreement simply did not pencil out.

At the University of Hawai'i, new President M.R.C. Greenwood has announced that faculty members will soon face a salary cut of close to 7 percent, like it or not. There is no other way to balance the UH budget, Greenwood said, since negotiations with the faculty union are at an impasse.

See the pattern here? It is becoming increasingly clear that labor and management — at least in the public sector — simply cannot find a way to talk their way out of a difficult situation. No one doubts that the state is in a budget crunch. The unions are willing to concede that times are tough.

But it seems impossible to move people beyond that place down the game board toward a solution. It has been suggested that in the past compromise worked because union leaders and government officials came out of the same political culture and thus had common interests and goals.

That might have been part of it. But more broadly, we seem to have moved into a culture of self-interest and distrust where obvious solutions fall to short-term interests and the desire to maintain whatever place on the game board that has been achieved over time.