One of my regrets from my undergraduate days was that I didn’t major in economics. I was in the School of Management at Purdue University when a professor encouraged me to change my degree track.

I turned him down. Years later, I wish I hadn’t ignored Professor Hueckel’s advice. An economics education provides a compelling framework for discerning how the world works. But I did take a couple econ courses.

One of the terms I still remember is “stickiness of wages.” This is the concept that once someone has been given a raise, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get him or her to give it up.

During the congressional debate over the auto bailout last week, Senate Republicans essentially asked autoworkers to immediately cut their wages. Part of the deal proposed by Sen. Robert Corker, R-Tennessee, would have required the United Auto Workers to lower its members’ pay by a certain date to achieve parity with the compensation offered by U.S. operations of Toyota, Honda and Nissan.

Senate Republicans claimed that car companies spend $71 per hour on labor versus the $49 per hour that foreign manufacturers pay. They demanded union concessions as one of the prices for their support of an auto industry bailout.

“We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, in floor speech during the debate.

The UAW disputes that the wage disparity is that great. The union also maintains it already made sacrifices to pave the way for a bailout. It agreed to let the car companies delay billions of dollars of payments into the fund that would cover retiree health benefits. It also shut down the “jobs bank” that allowed workers to continue collecting their pay even when they were laid off.

The unions say they went the extra mile by negotiating with Corker. But they refused to agree to the arbitrary deadline for wage parity. The union said in a statement that it “recognized that this would take time to work out and implement, using attrition programs to allow the companies to hire new workers at the lower wage and benefit rates.”

Reasonable people can disagree about whether generous union contracts have led to the near downfall of U.S. carmakers. But the wages earned by auto workers are a fact of life.

What American worker, in any industry, would have the wherewithal to immediately give up a big chunk of his or her pay? Could you do that? I couldn’t.

In the days since the demise of the bailout bill, the UAW has made its displeasure with Corker known. The only thing keeping a lid on the passion is that the Bush administration is going to use some of the previously approved federal rescue money to help the car companies.

But the bad blood between the GOP and unions will continue to boil. Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, expressed his frustration even before Senate Republicans filibustered the bill.

In a conference call last week on an economic stimulus bill sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, Gerard said that the recession is gutting America’s industrial base.

“There’s a whole bunch of angry and anxious [union] members out there,” Gerard said.

He warned the GOP not to scuttle the auto bailout.

“If we have Republicans that try to hold this up, we’re going to take to the streets,” Gerard said.

Republicans make some cogent and persuasive arguments that unionization raises costs for employers. But you have to wonder whether the party chose the right fight by going after organized labor on the auto bailout.

The unions may have earned sympathy during the tussle. And now they will be even more fired up to push through Congress the Employee Free Choice Act. The so-called card-check bill would make it easier for workers to organize.

Republicans and business groups have vowed to kill the bill. Their assertion that it undermines the secret ballot in the workplace might gain traction. But the GOP may find that poking labor in the eye over the auto bailout enraged its competitor—making a win on card-check a sticky proposition.