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Panama vs Pitman
These two get used interchangeably, and they are not the same thing. The on-off rhythm is identical. What separates them is whether your tour changes.
Panama
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Pitman
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
| Panama | vs | Pitman |
|---|---|---|
| The cycle | ||
| 12 hours | Shift length | 12 hours |
| 2-2-3 | On-off pattern | 2-2-3 |
| 14 days | Cycle length | 14 days |
| 42 hours | Average week | 42 hours |
| 3 | Most shifts in a row | 3 |
| What actually differs | ||
| YesUsually every 28 days | Do you change between days and nights? | NoYou hold one tour |
| NoIt resets at each changeover | Can you keep one sleep pattern? | Yes |
| Yes | Do you share the night burden with other crews? | NoNight crews stay on nights |
| No | Can you pick days or nights and stay there? | Yes |
| What they share | ||
| Yes | Every other weekend off | Yes |
| Yes | Same weekdays every cycle | Yes |
| Yes | Three-day weekend every fortnight | Yes |
The only real difference
Both work two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. Both are twelve-hour shifts. Both run a fourteen-day cycle that lands on the same weekdays every time, and both give every other weekend off.
Under Panama, crews rotate between day and night tours — most often after a full twenty-eight day block. Under Pitman, a crew is assigned to days or to nights and stays there. The on-off rhythm rotates; the time of day does not.
Which is better depends on one question
Do you want to stop working nights, or do you want to be good at working them?
Panama shares the burden. Nobody is stuck on permanent midnights, and every crew takes a turn. The cost is the changeover: the week you flip is the hardest week of the month, and it comes round every month.
Pitman lets a night crew build a sleep schedule and actually keep it, which is the single biggest thing you can do for your health on shift work. The cost is that if you draw nights and hate them, you are there until the next bid.
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Whichever of the two your agency runs, save it once and the calendar keeps track of it for you.
What officers say in practice
People who have worked both usually prefer whichever one matches their household. If someone at home keeps normal hours, a fixed tour is easier to live around because the pattern never moves. If you are on your own or your partner also works shifts, the rotation matters less and the fairness of Panama looks better.
One practical note: agencies are loose with the names. Plenty of departments call their schedule Panama when crews never rotate, which makes it a Pitman. Read your bid, not the label.
Full detail on each pattern: Panama schedule · Pitman 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 Panama to Pitman 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
Save whichever one your agency runs and a police shift calendar built by an officer fills the rest of the year in. Everything stays on your phone unless you choose to share it.
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