Mines in the Andes, oil and gas camps in the Amazon, remote construction projects and 24-hour logistics hubs cannot run on a Monday-to-Friday schedule. Peruvian law recognizes this. Alongside the 8-hour daily and 48-hour weekly maximum, it allows employers to organize work in blocks of long days followed by blocks of rest, provided the numbers balance over the cycle.
For international operators, rosters are often inherited from other jurisdictions or from a global engineering standard. A 14x7 or a 20x10 that works elsewhere may not work in Peru without adjustment. This article explains the averaging rule, shows how to test common rosters, and lists the design issues that sit beyond the arithmetic. It complements our guide to working time in Peru.
The legal basis for averaging
Article 25 of the Constitution provides that, in cumulative or atypical schedules, the average hours worked over the period cannot exceed the ordinary maximum. The Working Hours Law (D.S. 007-2002-TR) develops the point: the employer may establish alternative, cumulative or atypical schedules, daily or weekly, as long as the average over the corresponding period does not exceed the maximum.
Three features of the rule shape roster design:
- The average is measured over the full cycle. A 14x7 roster is tested over 21 days, not over the first week on site.
- It is the hours worked that count. Meal breaks that are not working time are excluded from the calculation; mandatory activities under the employer’s control are included.
- Averaging is not a waiver of overtime. Hours that push the average above the ceiling, or that exceed the ordinary roster, are overtime. Our note on the maximum working hours in Peru explains the underlying ceiling.
Key point
The single question for any roster is this: over one complete cycle, do the hours actually worked average 48 or fewer per week? If not, the difference is overtime, however the roster is labeled.
Running the numbers
The table below tests common rosters, assuming a 12-hour presence on site with a one-hour meal break that is not working time (11 hours worked), and one alternative. Figures are illustrative.
| Roster (days on × off) | Hours worked per shift | Cycle length | Weekly average |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 × 3 | 11 | 1 week | 44.0 |
| 7 × 7 | 11 | 2 weeks | 38.5 |
| 14 × 7 | 11 | 3 weeks | 51.3 |
| 14 × 7 | 10 | 3 weeks | 46.7 |
| 20 × 10 | 11 | about 4.3 weeks | 51.3 |
The method is straightforward: multiply days on by hours worked per shift, then divide by the number of weeks in the cycle (days on plus days off, divided by seven). A 14x7 with 11 working hours produces 154 hours over three weeks, or about 51.3 hours per week, so roughly 10 hours per cycle exceed the permitted average. The same roster with 10 working hours produces 140 hours, or about 46.7 hours per week, which falls within the limit, and a daily average over the 21 days of around 6.7 hours.
Rosters that fail the test are not unlawful as such; they simply generate structural overtime. The company can either redesign the roster (shorter effective shifts, longer rest blocks) or budget the overtime and pay it with the premiums explained in our note on overtime in Peru.
Design factors beyond the arithmetic
A compliant average is necessary but not sufficient. A roster in Peru should also address the following.
Weekly rest. Legislative Decree 713 guarantees at least 24 consecutive hours of rest each week, preferably on Sunday. In rotations, the rest block is usually designed to cover the weekly rest days accumulated during the work block. That design choice should be explicit in the roster documentation.
Public holidays. Work on a public holiday without substitute rest is paid with a 100% surcharge on top of the day’s pay. Rosters should state how holidays falling within a work block are treated, rather than leaving the answer to payroll each time.
Meal breaks. Each shift must include a meal break of at least 45 minutes within the working day. On remote sites where employees cannot leave, companies should assess whether the break is genuinely free time; see meal breaks in Peru.
Night work. Rotations frequently include night shifts, which trigger a pay floor of the minimum wage plus 35% for work between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., and a duty to rotate shifts where possible. Details are in night work in Peru.
Safety and fatigue. Peru’s Occupational Health and Safety Law (Law 29783) requires employers to identify hazards and assess risks, updating the assessment when conditions change. Long shifts at altitude, in extreme heat or with heavy machinery are precisely the conditions that should inform roster length. High-risk activities also require SCTR, the supplementary occupational-risk insurance. See our overview of occupational health and safety obligations in Peru.
Travel time. Getting to a remote site can take a day or more. Whether that time is working time depends on the degree of employer control; take a documented position before rollout.
Watch out
Global engineering or contractor standards often set rosters by reference to other jurisdictions. Before adopting a roster in Peru, test it against the 48-hour average using actual hours worked, not scheduled hours on site.
Illustrative scenario: a contractor joins a mining project
Illustrative scenario (hypothetical): A foreign engineering contractor wins a maintenance contract at a mine in the southern highlands. Its global standard is a 14x7 roster with 12-hour shifts. The Peruvian subsidiary hires 90 technicians under that roster, and payroll is processed from a regional center that pays a flat monthly salary plus a site allowance.
In the first internal review, the local HR lead runs the numbers: each technician works about 154 hours per cycle, an average of 51.3 per week. Over a year, that represents roughly 180 hours of overtime per technician that nobody has paid. The team also finds that the rest block had never been documented as covering weekly rest, that night shifts were paid above the night floor but without any rotation plan, and that the site allowance was treated as non-remunerative without analysis.
The company chose to move to 10 effective hours per shift for most roles and to pay overtime for a small group of critical technicians who kept longer shifts, with a monthly reconciliation of actual hours. It also reviewed the allowance with the criteria set out in remunerative and non-remunerative payments in Peru, because the classification changes the base for benefits.
Documenting the roster
- Describe the roster in the employment contract or a signed schedule annex: days on, days off, shift hours, meal breaks and cycle length.
- Include the roster in the internal work rules if the company is required to have them (employers with more than 100 employees).
- Keep an attendance record that captures actual entry and exit times on site, including overtime.
- Record the averaging calculation for each roster and keep it available for inspection.
- Document how weekly rest, holidays, travel and night work are treated.
Common mistakes
Testing scheduled presence instead of hours worked. The result can be wrong in either direction: including meal breaks inflates the average; ignoring pre-shift briefings deflates it.
Averaging over the wrong period. The average must be taken over the complete cycle defined by the roster.
Treating rotation allowances as automatically non-remunerative. Site, altitude or remote-area payments may be remuneration depending on how they are structured.
Changing rosters informally. Extending a 14x7 to a 21x7 during a project peak changes the average and may create overtime.
Consequences
A roster that exceeds the average creates recurring overtime liabilities for every worker assigned to it, and those liabilities build up cycle after cycle. Because the same roster usually applies to an entire crew, a design error is multiplied by headcount and by the number of cycles before it is detected. Where overtime becomes regular, it can also increase the base used for benefits such as the CTS severance deposit, adding a second layer of cost.
In an inspection, SUNAFIL, Peru’s labor inspectorate, will typically request the roster, attendance records and payroll to compare them. Fines are graded by severity and by the number of affected workers, which matters for large crews. Safety failures linked to fatigue carry their own, more serious exposure, including potential criminal liability in the gravest cases under the Criminal Code provisions on workplace safety.
Legal note
The averaging rule comes from the Constitution itself, not only from secondary legislation. That gives it considerable weight: a roster whose average exceeds the ceiling cannot be cured by contract, by employee consent or by a global policy, only by redesign or by treating the excess as paid overtime.
Takeaways
Cumulative and atypical rosters are lawful and widely used in Peru. The legal test is simple arithmetic applied honestly: hours actually worked, averaged over the complete cycle, against 48 per week. The rest of the work lies in documenting the roster, aligning payroll with actual hours, and designing shifts with safety in mind. Our working time and overtime service helps operators test rosters, model their cost and put the supporting documents in place before workers arrive on site.