research suggests that unionization neither negatively affects academic freedom nor harms faculty-student relationships. Many faculty associations like the American Association of University Professors support the right of graduate students to form unions. In Finland and Sweden, for instance, graduate students are often regular employees and are represented by their respective professional unions, such as member unions of Akava in Finland. United States The main issue over graduate student employee unionization in the United States is whether academic student employees should be classified as employees or students. The recognition of employee status would give graduate students the right to form a union and to bargain collectively. The position of many universities is that the work graduate student employees do is so intertwined with their professional education that collective bargaining will harm the educational process. Supporters of unionization argue that graduate employees' work is primarily an economic relationship. They point especially to universities' use of Teaching Assistants as part of a wider trend away from full-time, tenured faculty. For tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service considers the compensation of graduate student employees to be wages. When graduate students receive payment for teaching, it is not taxed on a 1042-S form (for scholarships), but on a W-2 (which is the form for employment income). The income from teaching is taxed differently from scholarships and treated like employment income. Public universities Academic student employees who may be either graduate or undergraduate students at public colleges and universities in the United States are covered by state collective bargaining laws, where these laws exist. Graduate students employees are excluded from Federal bargaining rights under the Taft–Hartley Act's exclusion of state and local government employees. The various state laws differ on which subgroups of academic student employees may bargain collectively, and a few state laws explicitly exclude them from bargaining. Some states have extended collective bargaining rights to graduate employees in response to unionization campaigns. As of 2004, 14 states including California and New York explicitly give collective bargaining rights to academic student employees; 11 states like Connecticut and New Mexico give public university employees the right to collectively bargain, but leaves eligibility for graduate employees unstated; Ohio and Maryland exclude collective bargaining rights for graduate student employees while still providing the same rights to other university employees; and 23 states deny collective bargaining rights for all university employees. Private universities Graduate student employees at private colleges