Three parties, two contracts, one condition of entry

Inès, a cybersecurity consultant, bills €700 a day and hesitates between the micro-enterprise regime and umbrella employment. An umbrella firm promises her « employee status without the constraints ». She is unsure she even qualifies, and the question does not lie where she thinks. Before reading on: on what conditions does one enter umbrella employment?

What the law calls portage salarial

Article L1254-1 of the Labour Code defines umbrella employment as an organised whole, not as a single contract. It brings together two distinct relationships: a commercial contract between the umbrella firm and the client company, and an employment contract between the umbrella firm and the carried employee.

The point that confuses lies here. The carried employee has no contractual link with the client company they work for: it is the umbrella firm that contracts with it, and the umbrella firm that pays the employee. The three-party arrangement therefore rests on two contracts only, never on three.

Three conditions attaching to the person

Article L1254-2 sets a substantive requirement: the carried employee must show expertise, qualification and autonomy allowing them to seek out their own clients and to agree with them the terms on which the service is performed and its price.

The three words matter together. Expertise without autonomy would describe an ordinary employee placed at a client's disposal; autonomy without expertise would not justify negotiating one's own fees. Umbrella employment assumes both, and qualification is the verifiable trace of it.

That qualification is assessed concretely: a two-year higher education qualification, or significant experience of at least three years in the same sector. Failing either, umbrella employment is not open, whatever the parties may wish.

The activity account, at the centre of the arrangement

The umbrella firm keeps an activity account for each carried employee. It traces the services billed to the client, the management fees taken, the professional expenses and the pay disbursed: the employee reads there the whole path from turnover to salary.

That account is what sets umbrella employment apart from ordinary employment. A conventional employee does not know what their work earns their employer; the carried employee knows the amount billed and what is deducted from it, line by line.

• The amount billed to the client company, as the carried employee negotiated it.
• The management fees retained by the umbrella firm.
• The professional expenses reimbursed to the employee.
• The social contributions, and the net pay that results from them.

It also changes what a negotiation with the client is about. Knowing exactly what share of the billed amount reaches them, the carried employee argues on a figure they can trace, rather than on a net salary whose composition they would have to take on trust.

What umbrella employment cannot cover

The arrangement does not apply to personal services supplied to private individuals. Childcare, housework, private tutoring and gardening for a private client are excluded from it, whatever the qualification of the person performing them.

The client company is also limited in its use of the arrangement. It may only turn to umbrella employment for occasional work outside its normal and permanent activity, or for a one-off service requiring expertise it lacks — never to replace employees on strike: umbrella employment does not substitute a status for a hire.

Umbrella employment therefore compares with the micro-enterprise regime on one precise axis: it trades a share of turnover for employee status and the administration that comes with it. What is bought is not a tax advantage but social cover and invoicing taken off one's hands.