Workday Minnesota: Utility unions warn country: Deregulation led to blackout By Mark Gruenberg
Fronek and other union leaders interviewed say 15 years of deregulation produced a rush for profits, cuts in the number of utility workers, a lack of maintenance, and failure to construct new facilities that could have prevented the blackout.
Deregulation also destroyed the mechanical independence of local power companies, making them part of a national grid that became vulnerable to a rolling cascade of failures.
That also means, they note, that greed and blackouts can occur elsewhere, if deregulation advances nationwide, as the Bush administration wants. Some states are resisting, however.