Justice rules: here are the conditions under which wage portage can be used

To be justified, the use of a “porté” employee, a hybrid status between an independent regime and traditional employment, must only concern an occasional task not linked to the normal and permanent activity of the company, recalled the Court of Cassation. According to the Labor Code, wage portage is based on a tripartite relationship. An independent professional carries out a mission on behalf of clients who pay for their services, via a commercial contract, to an umbrella company. It is the latter who pays the professional, linked to her by an employment contract.

“Ported” employees, mainly executives, thus benefit from social protection while organizing their work like independent workers. In the case submitted to the Court of Cassation, a former employee of a portage company requested damages for illegal loan of labor and bargaining, as well as for concealed work.

She argued that the commercial functions she had held in a company selling and purchasing used cars on the internet as a “ported” employee corresponded to a “non-casual task relating to the normal and permanent activity” of this company. To justify the recourse to salary portage and dismiss it, the court of appeal observed that his services in this company had been “of short duration” (12 months) and carried out “during the creation” of this company whose “activity quickly ceased”.

However, these reasons are “insufficient to establish that the tasks entrusted to the employee were occasional and did not fall within the normal and permanent activity of the company or that it was a one-off service requiring expertise which the company did not have”, as required by law, ruled the Court of Cassation, which ruled in favor of the ex-employee. (Court of Cassation, September 16, 2026, social chamber, n°24-21.513)