The premiums covered earlier in this chapter qualify for exclusion because each meets one of three specific statutory descriptions: hours beyond a daily or weekly standard, work on special days, or — the description the rest of this section turns on — a premium rate of at least time and one-half paid for work performed outside a basic workday or workweek that a collective bargaining agreement or other applicable employment contract establishes in good faith — genuinely set as the standard schedule, not devised to dodge overtime pay (§ 778.204(a)). That basic workday may not exceed 8 hours, and that basic workweek may not exceed the maximum hours standard applicable under section 7(a) — 40 hours, so good faith operates within those caps rather than substituting for them. § 778.207(a) draws that line: extra compensation provided by premium rates other than those the statute describes cannot be treated as overtime premiums, no matter how much the pay stub resembles one. When such other premiums are paid, they must be folded into the employee's regular rate before overtime is computed, and none of that premium can be credited toward the statutory overtime pay the employer owes.

The Act requires this inclusion for nightshift differentials, whether paid as a percentage of the base rate or as so many cents per hour, and for premiums paid for hazardous, arduous (physically demanding), or dirty work. It requires the same for any extra pay that functions as an incentive for rapid performance of the job. These premiums fail the exclusion not because they are paid in bad faith, but because they compensate for the character of the work or the shift itself — not for hours worked beyond a recognized normal workday or workweek.

A separate trap catches premiums that never take the form of an hourly rate at all. To qualify as an overtime premium, extra compensation must generally be provided by a premium rate per hour; a lump sum paid without regard to hours worked cannot qualify. § 778.207(b) carves out one exception: a pieceworker may instead earn a qualifying overtime premium through a bona fide (genuine, good-faith) piece rate paid at not less than one and one-half times the applicable nonovertime piece rate for pieces produced during overtime hours, as described in § 778.418. Outside that special case, if an employer pays eight hours' wages for a job whether it takes eight hours or less, the two extra hours' pay earned by an employee who finishes in six hours must go into the regular rate. The same is true where an employer pays for eight hours at a premium rate for overtime work regardless of whether the job actually took eight hours or less — no part of that payment qualifies as an overtime premium.