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Industrial relations systems differ across countries, yet their outputs converge. Canada and the USA are a striking example. Over the past two decades, private and public membership and density, employer opposition, and bargaining have converged. These findings contradict the conventional wisdom and invalidate the recommendation that the USA emulate Canadian policy.

Two models, the divergence and the convergence models, address comparisons of Canadian and American industrial relations. Most specialists support the divergence hypothesis. It asserts that the two countries' systems have produced major transnational differences in industrial relations outputs. The convergence model reassessed the assumptions, data, and conclusions of the divergent model and concluded that the two countries' systems produced very similar, although not identical, industrial relations outputs.Men have so long mistaken their conjectures concerning facts, for facts themselves.John Ferriar, 1798:196 The Issue: Divergence or Convergence?Two models, the divergence, or exceptionalist, model and its antithesis, the convergence model, address the issues of this article-a comparison of the outputs of the U.S. and Canadian systems of industrial relations. Virtually all specialists support the divergence, or exceptionalist, model. It asserts that the two countries' systems have produced major transnational differences in industrial relations outputs. Accordingly, the model maintains that Canadian unions successfully resisted while American unions acquiesced in concession bargaining during the 1980s and that the 695