Mayor Brandon Johnson achieved labor peace, but little else in a tentative agreement with the union representing Chicago’s 4,800 firefighters and paramedics so weighted in the union’s favor that it’s hard to imagine why it took more than four years to break the stalemate.

Former Mayors Lori Lightfoot and Rahm Emanuel talked about eliminating or softening the minimum staffing requirement and reconciling the number of firehouses with the fact that the Chicago Fire Department now spends two-thirds of its time responding to medical emergencies.

Neither one of them ultimately made those cuts. Johnson followed the same tough-talking script, only to retreat the same way.

Analysis

The tentative, six-year contract hammered out under pressure from a mediator includes no major union concessions,

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