4/10 schedule

What the 4/10 schedule is

Four ten-hour shifts a week instead of five eights. Same forty hours, one more day off, and a heavier overlap between watches for the agency.

That overlap is why so many departments moved to it. Two watches sharing a couple of hours each day means more units on the street at shift change, which is often when call volume peaks.

Pure 4/10 is a weekly pattern with fixed days off. In practice most agencies wrap it in a longer rotation — six weeks is common — where crews move through day and night tours and the days off shift with each block.

How the cycle runs

The base week. In a rotating version, this block repeats with different weekdays and flips to nights partway through the cycle:

Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.

Rotating 4/10

A six-week 4/10 rotation is a good example of why the pattern name alone doesn't tell you your schedule. The shift length is fixed at ten hours, but which four days you work, and whether you're on days or nights, changes from block to block.

Patterns like these are the reason a rotation is worth saving once as a template and applying from a start date, rather than typed in a week at a time.

Hours and overtime

Forty hours a week, on the nose, which is the main administrative appeal — no built-in overtime and no alternating heavy and light weeks.

The catch is the tenth hour. A ten-hour shift with a holdover on the back end runs to twelve or thirteen before anyone notices, and those hours only show up if you log them.

Who works it

Compressed weeks are most common where agencies want overlap without twelve-hour tours:

• Municipal police services
• Provincial services and highway agencies
• Detectives and specialty units
• Corrections
• Public works and utilities
• Government offices

The trade-off

Put it on your calendar

Four tens is the most common compressed shift schedule in policing, and it gives you a third day off every week, and the only question most weeks is which three days you are on.

Save the pattern once and it fills in ahead of you, with the paid duty work you pick up on that third day tracked beside it.

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 10-hour rotation that established day is 10-hour, so the ceiling is 10-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 10-hour shift leaves 14 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 40 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.

The ten-hour compressed work week, as the agreements write it

Canadian police agreements do not describe this as a 4/10. They describe it as a ten-hour compressed work week, and the clause is specific about the rest between shifts, which is the part an American description usually leaves out:

A ten-hour shift scheduling system shall be established whereby a member shall be on duty for ten consecutive hours, followed by at least fourteen consecutive hours off duty, unless the parties agree otherwise.

Fourteen hours off is a floor, not a courtesy, and it constrains what the service can schedule against you. The same clauses set out the actual start times, and the spread is wider than most rotations allow — a day shift of 0700 to 1700, with afternoon shifts starting anywhere from 0800 through to 1600 depending on the agreement.

Checked 7 August 2026. Quoted from the collective agreements, statutes and regulators named above. Agreements are renegotiated and employment standards are amended — confirm the current text before relying on a figure or a threshold.

Common questions

Is 4/10 the same as a compressed work week?

It's the most common form of one. Four ten-hour days is forty hours in four days instead of five.

Do 4/10 schedules rotate?

Often. Many agencies run 4/10 inside a multi-week rotation that moves crews through day and night tours, with the days off changing each block.

How many hours a week is 4/10?

Forty, before any overtime, holdovers or court time.