When union‐firm pairs bargain sequentially, and when unobserved components of firms' abilities to pay are subject to correlated shocks, unions that bargain later in a sequence can acquire valuable information by observing previous bargaining outcomes in their industry. We derive the implications of this kind of learning in an asymmetric information model of wage negotiations and argue that the most robust implication is a lower incidence of strikes among “followers” than “leaders” in wage negotiations. Considerable empirical support for this implication is found in a long panel of Canadian contract negotiations.

In contrast to nonunion workers, reemployment wages of workers displaced from unionized jobs decline with tenure on the lost job. This finding cannot easily be explained by firm‐ or industry‐specific human capital accumulation, deferred‐pay policies, standard matching models, or a correlation between tenure and reentry rates into unionized jobs. Possible explanations include negative selection of senior union workers and a negative causal effect of unionism on workers' alternative skills. Despite a much flatter predisplacement tenure‐wage profile, displaced union workers' wage losses increase with tenure at a rate comparable to or higher than those of nonunion workers.