WASHINGTON (PAI) - The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners have rejoined the organized labor community - sort of.

Last month, a memo from AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Edward Sullivan to affiliated local unions and councils said that the Carpenters would re-affiliate with the department effective Dec. 1.

However, almost at the same time came a memo from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who said the Carpenters' issues with the AFL-CIO are still unresolved, leaving the union's role in organized labor up to further talks and a future AFL-CIO Executive Council decision.

"Discussions between the AFL-CIO and the Carpenters have proceeded, and some issues must also be addressed, especially jurisdictional issues," Sweeney wrote. "And any tentative agreement must go to the Executive Council and it will not be submitted until those issues are resolved."

The AFL-CIO constitution says that a member of a department must also be a federation member. Thus in order for the Carpenters to rejoin the building trades they also have to resolve their issues before they re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO.

Jurisdictional problems were one reason Carpenters President Douglas McCarron cited for his union's withdrawal in March 2000. The AFL-CIO formally ejected the Carpenters for not paying dues, but talks continued. McCarron also questioned the benefits his union got from the $4 million per year the Carpenters sent to the AFL-CIO. And he charged the federation spent too little on organizing.

McCarron's action prompted major changes, approved Oct. 17, in how the building trades unions handle jurisdictional disputes.

While the jurisdictional issue was settled, the others were "tabled," Operating Engineers President Frank Hanley told Press Associates in a telephone interview. "They've been all put to the side - tabled is the best word," he explained.

Sullivan said in a letter to affiliate locals Carpenters unions "are to be encouraged and welcomed" into state and local district councils.

Carpenters officials in Washington did not return calls seeking comment on the re-affiliation. And last week, it was still not clear how the decision in Washington affects the Carpenters in

Michigan, who dropped out of the Detroit and Michigan Building Trades Councils several years before the UBC split with national building trades and the AFL-CIO.

A key development was the Building Trades Department's re-write of rules for handling jurisdictional disputes. "The plan for settlement of disputes in the construction industry needs to be modernized to take into account actual conditions in the industry," McCarron said in a Feb. 21, 2002 letter to Sullivan.

The re-write that followed is the first since 1984. It says "area practice" will be "a major determining factor in dispute resolution" on job sites. Until now, "decisions of record" governed jurisdictional disputes, and Sullivan said some of those "dating back to the 1900s" were used to solve present disputes "and may not be relevant to today's construction industry."

Now, decisions of record will be used, but a challenging union may cite area practice in trying to overturn them.

Withdrawal of the Carpenters on the national level deprived the AFL-CIO of membership that federation per capita records put at 324,000, but which McCarron says is 525,000.

Ironworkers President Joe Hunt said in a statement to Press Associates that McCarron now "recognizes we need every craft in the building trades standing shoulder-to-shoulder in these difficult times, on the job, in the political arena or organizing the unorganized."