Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration has reached a deal with labor unions that should help smooth the way for Verizon FiOS-TV in the city -- and may also help with tax collection and immigration enforcement.

Representatives of the Laborers District Council of Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh Building and Construction Trades Council met with city officials this morning and came out with a handshake arrangement. The Laborers will drop their insistence that Verizon work closely with the Foundation for Fair Contracting, or FFC, to monitor subcontractors' hiring. The administration will in turn write a resolution, to be submitted to city council next week, that would have the FFC help the city Finance Department ferret out tax cheats and illegal workers.

The FFC is a private, nonprofit entity funded by unions and contractors that sends investigators to job sites to check that labor laws are being followed.

"They will bring to the attention of the administration any suspicions of immigration violations or failure to pay taxes," said City Information Systems Director Howard Stern. "There's no fee whatsoever to the city."

"We support the Verizon project going through," said a spokesman for the Laborers, who asked not to be named. "We have no objections to the Verizon initiative being approved."

The Laborers had wanted the city to insist that Verizon turn over lists of all contractors on the FiOS installation to the FFC, citing several cases in which contractors had used undocumented workers. Verizon said the charges were years old and argued that it had an auditing system in place to ensure its contractors were using legal labor.

The administration said that federal cable law did not allow it to insist that Verizon work with the FFC. Instead, the FFC will have a designated contact within the city Finance Department to whom it can report any tax or labor law violations by any contractor on publicly or privately funded construction sites.

The FFC is "not being deputized," said Mr. Stern, nor will it be given information that's not already public record. "We're not doing anything different than we would do with any private individual or organization" that wanted to report violations.

Nonetheless, council approval is sought. Council yesterday gave tentative approval to an agreement to bring FiOS-TV in to compete with Comcast, but by a 3-0 vote with four abstentions and two absences. A final vote could come on Tuesday -- the same day the FFC resolution may be introduced -- and would require five ayes.

Created in 1992, the FFC's purpose is to "make sure that contractors are following applicable federal and state laws," said Chris Petrone, its administrator, who supervises seven field investigators. "We send our field agents out to the job sites. They'll pull certified payrolls, go through certified payrolls to make sure that there aren't any mistakes there.

"They will talk to the guys and say, 'Hey, are you getting paid this? This is what you should be getting paid.' "

They take any violations to the appropriate authorities, usually the state Department of Labor and Industry.