stipends or wages and benefits such as health insurance and child care. Additionally, increased labor union activity in academic sectors has played a key role in graduate employee unionization. During the sizable growth in the 1990s, graduate students were better able to access legal support, financial resources, and networking opportunities provided by the new leadership in the AFL–CIO and by unions such as UAW. The newly elected 1995 AFL–CIO leadership engaged college students by creating a Union Summer Internships program in 1996 to train students in union organizing. The AFL–CIO also sent Organizing Institute recruiters onto college campuses to build pro-labor solidarity networks and share information with student organizers about other universities' organizing efforts. Similarly, UAW plays a significant role in supporting graduate student organizers, some of whom see UAW as the most responsive union to academic student employees' needs in comparison with traditional education unions. UAW has won affiliations of important student bodies such as graduate student employees in the UC system and in NYU. Support and criticism Some graduate students, notably organizers in the union local UAW 2865 representing student workers at nine campuses of the University of California, believe graduate employee unions empower students and gives potential to expand bargaining to items outside of the usual economic benefits or job security. UAW 2865's newest contract includes provisions that allow graduate students to control class sizes, extend financial opportunities to undocumented students, and provide gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students. Many institutions that represent faculty and teachers such as the American Association of University Professors and the National Education Association support graduate students' right to join a union and to bargain collectively. Many university administrators and higher education-related associations like the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities oppose graduate student unionization. They argue that unionization threatens academic freedom of institutions by making education policies subject to collective bargaining and harms the relationship between professors and students due to possible conflicts arising from the bargaining process. However, recent research suggests that unionization has either no impact or a weak positive impact to both academic freedom and faculty-student relationships. Example unions Teaching Assistants Association, University of Wisconsin, Madison Graduate Employee Organization, University of Massachusetts Amherst Graduate Employees and Students Organization, Yale University Graduate Employees Together, University of Pennsylvania (has not yet had an election) Graduate Assistants United, University of Rhode Island Harvard Graduate Students Union, Harvard University