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3-4 4-3 schedule
Three on, four off, four on, three off — twelve-hour shifts on a two-week cycle, with every other weekend free by design.
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 14 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Crews
- 4
What the 3-4 4-3 schedule is
Three twelve-hour shifts, four days off, four shifts, three days off. Fourteen days from start to repeat.
Because the cycle is exactly two weeks long, it lands on the same days of the week every time — which is the point. Set it up so the four-day break covers a weekend and you have every other weekend off, permanently, without anyone having to arrange it.
It reaches the same forty-two hour average as Panama and 4 on 4 off, but arranges the blocks differently: shorter runs, and a four-day break in the middle of each cycle.
How the cycle runs
One fourteen-day cycle:
Set a start day, set the length to 14 days, and paint each one. Only the first cycle is painted — the app repeats it from there.
Start day: 30 August 2026Days: 14
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 14 days, which divides by seven — so it lands on the same weekdays for ever and never drifts. Which weekends you get is decided by your squad, not by the pattern. Across the squads the answer runs from 0 weekends a year to 52.
A squad that does well on this rotation: 52 full weekends across a year. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
Why people bid for it
Three shifts in a row is an easy run. Four is manageable. Neither block is long enough for fatigue to pile up the way it does on six or seven in a row.
And the four-day break every fortnight is the kind of time that is actually usable — long enough to travel, take a course, or work a solid block of paid duty jobs.
Hours and overtime
Seven twelve-hour shifts every fourteen days averages forty-two hours a week, arriving as thirty-six one week and forty-eight the next.
That uneven split is worth knowing about, because the forty-eight-hour week is where overtime rules tend to bite depending on how your work period is defined.
Who works it
Anywhere twelve-hour coverage meets a preference for predictable weekends:
- Municipal police services
- RCMP detachments
- Dispatch centres
- Hospitals and nursing units
- Corrections
- Industrial operations
The trade-off
What works
- Every other weekend off, by design
- Same weekdays every cycle
- A four-day break every fortnight
- Never more than four shifts in a row
What hurts
- Forty-eight hour weeks alternate with thirty-six
- Twelve-hour shifts are long
- Half your weekends are always worked
- Uneven weeks complicate overtime
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
Put it on your calendar
Three on, four off, four on, three off — the same fourteen days as Panama, arranged so the long break comes twice.
Save it once and both breaks show up on the calendar as far ahead as you want to look.
What Canadian law does to this rotation
The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.
The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 12-hour rotation that established day is 12-hour, so the ceiling is 12-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.
Eleven consecutive hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum and it applies whatever the pattern. A 12-hour shift leaves 12 hours before the next one is due, so this cycle clears it — but a held-over shift or a court appearance on the turnaround eats straight into that margin.
The weekly rest rule is the one long runs meet. The ESA requires at least 24 consecutive hours off in each work week, or 48 consecutive hours off in every period of two consecutive work weeks. This cycle runs 4 shifts back to back, so it is the two-week version that has to carry it.
Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages 42 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.
And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.
Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.
Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.
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.
Common questions
How many hours a week is a 3-4 4-3 schedule?
Forty-two on average — thirty-six one week, forty-eight the next.
Do you really get every other weekend off?
Yes, if the cycle is set up so the four-day break lands on a weekend. Because the cycle is exactly fourteen days, it stays there permanently.
How is it different from Panama?
Same hours, different blocks. Panama is 2-2-3; this is 3-4-4-3, which trades the three-shift run for a four-day break in the middle.
Put the 3-4 4-3 schedule on your calendar
Save the 3-4 4-3 schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Leave, court and the work you take on your own time go in around it.
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