12 hour Panama shift being proposed at work.

[lwt16]

LSP patrol folks have worked this for years, and mostly love it. Essentially, you are working half the month. If you have overtime available, such as federal grants for DWI, seatbelt enforcement, etc, you probably have more opportunity to work them due to the additional days off.

I was in Patrol prior to this shift, so I’ve never actually worked it. But, my buddies typically love it for the additional days off.

Okay, so more OT possibilities. I could see that as a positive.

Not for me though. I'm very nearly debt free and have no desire to work OT other than the occasional four hours for ammo expenditures.

Another concern is off day court appearances. The court here has never made it easy to appear and typically always schedules court on our off days. Well, those of us that aren't off on weekends.

It's in infancy stage currently......talk of a trail run at one of our precincts as well as dispatch. Currently, I have no standing in the matter but always get my ducks and research in a row before sending things up.

Thanks for the positive feedback.

[Jim Watson]

Slow rotating shift schedules are brutal. I bet you can find studies of adverse health and performance effects.
Normally straight days, I hated to be summoned to shift rotation for major test or production programs at my non LE agency.
A 12 hour day is tough, too. I didn't mind a 10 hour day, but that makes for strange schedules for around the clock operations.

[MD7305]

My previous department used that same schedule coming from an 8hr schedule that only afforded one Saturday per month off. They switched to:
M,T-on, W,Th-off, F,Sa,Su-on, M,T-off, W,Th-on, F,Sa,Su-off.

The big draw was every other weekend off, and a 3 day weekend at that. The way they ruined it was making you rotate from days to nights every 2 weeks. So after your weekend off you'd switch. It was brutal, my attitude sucked, I gained weight, couldn't sleep when I wanted and fell asleep when I didn't need to. All suggestions made to change were countered by go somewhere else, we're not changing.
My current employer uses the same schedule but permanent shifts. I love it, cures all the issues I suffered switching. I know of other departments that switch every 28 days or month and they seem to like it that way

[Mr. Goodtimes]

Coming from the fire/medic side, working 24 on 48 off with a 3 week relief day... there are things I love and I don’t. I don’t enjoy waking up after I go to bed, I honestly don’t think we the call volume we work that it’s a safe schedule anymore.

I would love the schedule you describe minus the rotating days/nights every month. I would say six months to a year on rotations. I wouldn’t mind working nights as long as it was consistent.


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[shiv]

I am not LEO but I work 0700-1900, ideally, but we have to be there 0630 and 2000 is the more realistic out time. We are supposed to work three shifts per calendar week. If things worked out the way it’s supposed to work, I would be happy having four days a week off. Ideally we get the option to work six on ending a week with three and starting a week with three every so many weeks and get eight in a row off...like a vacation without losing pay or time off. And when you do take vacation, you can be off weeks at a time without losing pay.

The problem is, they get so short staffed because people drop like flies, call in, etc. we have mandated overtime constantly and we are consistently being forced to flip shifts even during the same week. We all walk around like zombies, have no life outside of work, and our days “off” are simply recovery. This type of work schedule has caused me to gain weight, lose sleep, and I haven’t time for PT. It is terrible.


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[octagon]

If the 12 hour shifts are there to stay, try to articulate the sleep deprivation, officer health consequences and financial liability issues that will come from alternating day/night shift every month. It's really not bad if you stay on your shift for 4-6 months before having to alternate. If you barely have time to get used to the sleep schedule before you swap again, it's going to lead to the problems others have already mentioned.

One way to keep seniority benefits in place is how my agency does shift changes. At the end of the year, shift bids open. Everyone ranks their preference for the available shifts from most to least preferred. If more officers bid a shift than there are spots available, seniority kicks in and the most senior officers get the shift.

DanM hit most of the points I would have posted and I agree with them. I would seriously look at multiple studies that show that revolving shifts have negative health and safety consequences.

Our agency was 8 hour shifts for 3/4 of my career and we switched to 12s after a Plant-Moran study showed how inefficient our 8 hr schedule was. Almost everyone in a union survey wanted to keep 8s but the push was on so we switched. Some other things to consider are how they are going to compensate time. We got 2 personal days when we were on 8s but that changed to 16 hours when we switched to 12s which means only a day and a half. The same issue come up with sick time, Carry over, Vacation etc if they are based on 8 hour now will they change with the 12s?

Overtime- is the agency limiting overtime to days off only with a switch to 12s or limiting total hours worked in a day? We were limited to 16hrs allowed to be worked a day so OT was limited to 4 hour programs on work days and 4,6 or 8 hr OT on days off but they couldn't be combined with coming off or going on to a 12 hr shift. This means OT options were less open than initially believed and a huge pain to coordinate scheduling.

Lastly are you getting OT pay for the extra 4 hours worked each pay period if you work all 12s or straight time? We elected to have an 8 hr day per pay period to avoid OT cost to the city which worked out decently but later changed to straight time just before I retired. Make sure these are worked out beforehand or your agency may try and take advantage of savings where time, and compensation are not clearly established.

[lwt16]

We actually tried four 10s for a while and even those caused manpower issues and increased call time response.

No matter where this goes, and I've been led to believe that it's dead in the water due to backlash, its a complete leadership failure/debacle of enormous proportions. The often quoted phrase "They forget where they came from" when referring to admin is not really the root of the issue. I think it is that admin types, who put the job first in their own lives to climb that career ladder, figure that everyone else is made up of the same mindset. So they come up with ideas like this to justify their existence within the organization.

When in reality, most everyone that I work with (admittedly, older guys set in their ways) put family first....without fail. We see this place as a paycheck and health care and nothing more. We still like getting our hands dirty on the streets and actually pity those that are in admin/office type jobs.

We want stability, seniority to rule, and to be left alone. And I think they are learning this now and destroying any confidence that the line level officers and Sergeants had in their decision making abilities. I'm not sure there is "damage control" for this added stress they are causing.

Time will tell.

[TC215]

Our patrol officers work 12-hour shifts, based on a 28-day cycle. 0700-1900 and 1900-0700.

4 nights, off 3, 3 days, off 1, 3 nights, off 3, 4 days, off 7.

The only good part is the 7 days off.

[BobM]

We work two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off every two weeks. The officers this are off every other Fri/Sat/Sun. In that two week cycle each officer has an eight hour day. We bid annually on either days or nights, and what day you want for your short day.
It was well liked when we started it around 2010. It allows junior officers to have weekend days off. When we started it, there four four officer crews, two for days, two for nights. Now each crew is three officers when everyone is available. It's sometimes difficult to cover shifts for sick leave, etc.
I think alternating days and nights would cause a lot of problems. Prior to the above schedule, the shift sergeants were rotating every three months on a five days a week 8 hour schedule. That lasted a year and a half to two years and I think it would've caused more health and fatigue issues had it continued.

[MI Law]

We work the same schedule, except for the rotating days to nights. We have 4 month assignments based solely on seniority.

We are split 60 for/40 against the 12 hours shifts. If you work days, it is awesome. You are off for Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every other week. If you work days, it blows. We get really slow around here after 0230 and it makes the last 4 hours of the shift drag and it's tough to stay sharp.

Court will suck 100% of the time you are on nights. If it is on Monday after you work the weekend, then you are sitting in court tired as hell til at least noon. If it is on Monday after you were off for the weekend, then you ave to wake up at 0700 and sit in court until at least noon...then what do you do? Go home and go to sleep for a couple hours? Personally, I can't do it and end up just being awake for 26+ hours. If court is on Tuesday between work days it's even worse. If it's on your Tuesday off, then it screws up your days off because you already slept away your Monday because you worked the weekend and now you have to sit in court for half of your second day off.

You can substitute training for court in all of these examples too. We frequently have training from 0800-1200 on Wednesdays after working Mon/Tues...none of the night guys learn anything because they are zombies...snoring is not uncommon.