How officers get paid duty work

You have to be on the list

Paid duty is not handed out at random. Services keep a list of officers eligible to take it, and you have to be on that list before anything comes your way. Getting on it is usually an application rather than an automatic thing, and some services only open the list at a set point in the year — meaning that if you miss it, you wait. Coming off the list is generally easier than getting back on.

Eligibility conditions vary. Being in good standing is the common one. Some services set a minimum period of service before you can take paid duty at all.

How the work is handed out

There is no single system. The three you will run into are:

• First come, first served. Assignments are posted and whoever claims them first has them. Fast, and it rewards whoever is watching.
• A rotation. The list turns over so the work is shared. Slower, and more predictable.
• Seniority. Longer service gets first refusal, and what is left goes down the list.

Plenty of services run a mix, or use one system for construction and another for events. Whichever yours uses, the practical question is the same: when the assignment appears, are you free to take it?

Which is where your rotation comes in

An assignment is only worth having if it does not collide with a shift, and on a rotating schedule that is not something you can work out in your head three weeks ahead. The same job that is impossible on one cycle is a clear day on the next.

This is the whole reason for keeping your rotation on a calendar that runs forward. When a duty is posted for a date six weeks out, you want to know in a second whether you are working nights that week — not after counting back through the pattern.

Short jobs still pay a minimum

Services set a minimum number of hours for any assignment, so a job that finishes early still pays the minimum. Cancellation works the same way: cancel inside the service's window and the organiser still pays, which usually means the officers assigned are still paid.

Both of those are worth knowing when you are deciding whether a short assignment is worth the drive.

Keep your own record

The service's system knows about the booking. It does not know about your year. It will not tell you what you have earned across every organiser since January, which assignments have actually been paid, or how far you drove to get to them.

That record is yours to keep, and the time to keep it is when you finish the job — not in the spring when you are trying to remember a Saturday in August.

This page describes how paid duty generally works. It is not policy and it is not advice. Your service's paid duty office and your collective agreement set the terms that apply to you.

More on paid duty

• How paid duty works
• The rules and limits
• How it differs by province
• Paid duty records and what to keep