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DuPont vs Panama
Both are four-team twelve-hour rotations averaging forty-two hours. One front-loads the strain and pays it back with a full week off. The other spreads it evenly.
DuPont
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Panama
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
| DuPont | vs | Panama |
|---|---|---|
| The cycle | ||
| 12 hours | Shift length | 12 hours |
| 28 days | Cycle length | 14 days |
| 42 hours | Average week | 42 hours |
| 4 | Teams needed | 4 |
| 4 | Most shifts in a row | 3 |
| 7 days | Longest break in the cycle | 3 days |
| What it costs | ||
| Yes | Four night shifts in a row | No |
| Yes | A full week off every cycle | No |
| No | Every other weekend off | Yes |
| No36 to 72 hour weeks | Even week-to-week load | Yes36 and 48 alternating |
| Living with it | ||
| Yes | Same weekdays every cycle | Yes |
| YesA full week | Long enough break to travel | NoThree days |
| No | Predictable weekends | Yes |
The trade is strain against recovery
DuPont runs four nights, three off, three days, one off, three nights, three off, four days, then seven days off. That last week is the entire reason the pattern exists, and people who work it will tell you so.
Panama asks for less at any one moment — never more than three shifts in a row — and gives back less at any one moment: three days off, every fortnight, forever.
Four nights in a row
This is the part to be honest about. Four consecutive twelve-hour night shifts is the hardest block in common use, and it arrives twice in every DuPont cycle. Older officers tend to feel it more, and it is the most common reason crews vote a pattern out.
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The week off
And this is the part that keeps it. Seven consecutive days is enough to reset a sleep cycle properly, take a holiday, get medical appointments done, or work a solid block of paid duty jobs. Nothing in Panama comes close — three days is a long weekend, not a week.
What your family notices
Panama protects every other weekend, permanently. DuPont does not: the twenty-eight day cycle lands on the same weekdays each time, but your weekends fall wherever the pattern puts them.
For a household with school-age children, that difference usually decides it. For someone who travels, or works a second job in blocks, the week off usually wins.
Full detail on each pattern: DuPont schedule · Panama schedule
In Canada this is a bargaining question
Everything above holds either side of the border — the cycles are the cycles. What changes here is who decides, and what the two cost.
A Canadian service does not simply adopt a rotation. The schedule sits in the collective agreement as a compressed work week article, and the Toronto Police Association and OPP agreements both carry one. In the OPP's case the terms of a compressed work week agreement are themselves subject to the grievance procedure. So moving from DuPont to Panama is not a decision a new inspector makes — it is bargained, and it stays until it is bargained again.
It also does not follow that a whole service runs one of them. The Toronto Police Association agreement carries a Shift Schedules schedule in the plural, so which one you work can depend on where you are posted. The answer is in the agreement.
What the province still decides
Both of these run the same shift length, so provincial overtime rules treat them alike — but the rules themselves differ. Ontario triggers overtime after 44 hours in a week and has no daily trigger. British Columbia triggers after 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week, with double time past 12. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate it at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Where the cycle does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks by written agreement — and in a unionised service, your union makes that agreement.
Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.
The shift schedule you actually work
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