Panama schedule

What the Panama schedule is

Panama is the best known name for the 2-2-3 rotation. Crews work two days on, two off, three on, two off, two on, then three off, and the whole thing resets every fourteen days.

It exists to cover a post twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with four crews and no gaps. Because the cycle is exactly two weeks long, it lands on the same days of the week every time — which is the single feature people like most about it. Every other weekend is a three-day weekend, permanently.

The name gets used loosely. Panama, Pitman and 2-2-3 all describe the same on-off cadence. What separates them in practice is whether crews change between days and nights, which is covered below.

How the cycle runs

One full fourteen-day cycle, from the crew's point of view:

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

Days and nights

Under a true Panama, crews rotate between day and night tours — commonly swapping after each twenty-eight day block, though some agencies rotate at the end of every fourteen-day cycle and others after several months.

That slow rotation is deliberate. Flipping between days and nights every couple of shifts is far harder on sleep than staying on one tour for a month at a time. If your agency never rotates crews between days and nights, what you are working is closer to a Pitman.

Slow rotation Panama

When people say slow rotation Panama, they mean the version where a crew holds one tour for a full twenty-eight day block — four complete cycles — before flipping to the other. The 2-2-3 rhythm never changes; only the time of day does, and only once a month.

It is the most common arrangement in policing, and the reason is sleep. A month is long enough for a night crew to build a sleep pattern and keep it, which is impossible on a fast rotation. The cost is the changeover itself: the week you flip is the hardest week of the month, and it arrives on a schedule you can see coming.

Faster variants exist. Some agencies swap tours at the end of each fourteen-day cycle, some at the end of a quarter. All of them are still Panama — save the block length your agency actually runs and the calendar handles the flip for you.

Hours and overtime

The cycle produces seven twelve-hour shifts every fourteen days — eighty-four hours a fortnight, averaging forty-two hours a week.

That average hides an alternation officers know well: one week is thirty-six hours, the next is forty-eight. Where the overtime threshold falls in that pattern depends on your agency's work period and your contract, which is exactly why keeping your own hour count matters.

Who works it

Panama shows up anywhere a post has to be covered around the clock:

• Police services and RCMP detachments
• Dispatch and communications centres
• Corrections and detention
• Hospital nursing units
• Manufacturing and refining
• Security and campus policing

The trade-off

Put it on your calendar

Two on, two off, three on — and the block you worked last week is the block you are off this week. Counting that out on a paper calendar is where the mistakes happen.

Save the fourteen days once and it runs forward as far as you want to look, with the day and night halves in the right place.

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 3 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

Are Panama and Pitman the same schedule?

They share the same 2-2-3 on-off cadence. The usual distinction is that Panama rotates crews between day and night tours, while Pitman keeps a crew on one tour permanently.

How many hours a week is a Panama schedule?

Forty-two on average — alternating between a 36-hour week and a 48-hour week across the fourteen-day cycle.

Why is it called Panama?

The name is industry shorthand rather than an official standard, which is why the same pattern travels under Panama, Pitman and 2-2-3 depending on who you ask.