I ran charge and there is no charge pay on my stub.
Missing charge pay costs you twice.
Once for the premium itself, and again in your overtime — because charge pay belongs in your regular rate, so leaving it off lowers the rate every overtime hour that week was paid on.
- 29 CFR 778.108
- 29 CFR 778.109
- 29 CFR 778.207(b)
- DOL Fact Sheet #54
You took the assignment because the unit was short. You made the calls, took the admissions, fielded the family. The stub shows the shift and not the premium, and the shift looks exactly like a shift where you did not run the floor.
The FLSA does not require charge pay. Your employer's own policy does.
There is no federal law that says a charge nurse must be paid a premium. What creates the obligation is your employer's pay policy, your union contract, or the offer letter you accepted — and once a promised premium is earned, it is wages. Unpaid wages are enforceable under state wage payment law, which is usually a faster route than a federal claim.
The federal rule enters at the second step. 29 CFR 778.108 defines the regular rate as all remuneration for employment, and 778.207(b) treats premiums for extra responsibility or undesirable work as part of it. So charge pay you did receive raises your regular rate, and charge pay you did not receive lowers it.
Same for float
A float or pull premium works identically: created by policy, and once paid it belongs in the regular rate. Floating is also the most common moment for a differential to be dropped, because the shift is recorded against a unit that is not yours.
Two charge shifts, and what they cost when they go missing.
A nurse at $38.00 an hour works 50.0 h in a week. Two of those shifts, 25.0 h, she ran charge at a $2.00 premium. The charge premium never appears.
What the premium is worth
- Charge premium · $2.00 × 25.0 h
- $50.00
- Regular rate with charge pay · $1,950.00 ÷ 50.0 h
- $39.00
- Regular rate without it
- $38.00
- Overtime hours in the week
- 10.0 h
- Premium lost in overtime · 0.5 × $1.00 × 10.0 h
- $5.00
The five dollars is the part nobody sees. Even if you get the fifty back by asking, the overtime effect stays wrong unless the correction is run through the regular rate for that week.
Find the shift, then find the earning code.
Charge pay usually appears under its own earning code, something like CHG, CHRG or IN CHARGE, with hours next to it. Count the hours you ran charge in the period and compare. A partial number is as common as a zero: paid on eight hours of a twelve-and-a-half hour shift, because the assignment was entered late.
Assignment sheets, the shift huddle board and your own notes establish which shifts you ran. Payroll will ask for exactly that, and a list of dates with hours beside them is a much shorter conversation than a question about whether the system is correct.
Run the numbers on your own week.
Missing charge pay lowers the rate your overtime was paid on. See what your regular rate should have been.
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