Food delivery couriers for Glovo are employees, the Portuguese Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) found on May 28 2025, bringing clarity to a legal dispute over the issue in the southern European country.
Portugal introduced a rebuttable legal presumption of employment in the platform economy to its labour code in May 2023, based on a set of six criteria, with two required to trigger the presumption.
Portugal’s labour inspectorate was tasked with conducting an ‘extraordinary campaign’ to tackle bogus self-employment following the labour code change, with Glovo, a Spanish-headquartered platform, one of the first platform’s targeted.
The labour inspectorate found that the riders were employees, which Glovo rebutted, leading to a series of localised court cases with mixed results, with some judges finding the riders did meet at least two of the six criteria, while others found the opposite.
The Lisbon Court of Appeal had found that Glovo had successfully rebutted the legal presumption, leading the Public Prosecutor’s Office to take the case to the Supreme Court, which decided that five out of the six criteria for the legal presumption had been met.
The court found that Glovo “controls and supervises the performance of the activity, including in real time…through electronic means or of algorithmic management”. Furthermore, the judges found that the “absolutely essential” tool to carry out the work is the platform, which is fully controlled by the company.
The Supreme Court judges unanimously supported the conclusion of a lower court which found that Glovo “exercises the power of direction and determines specific rules”.
Glovo is one of two big food delivery platforms, along with Uber Eats, which has also faced bogus self-employment claims by the labour inspectorate since the introduction of the legal presumption two years ago.
Under Portuguese procedural law, each case investigated by the labour inspectorate which is rebutted by the platform has to go through its own judicial proceeding, meaning the legal presumption can only be triggered worker-by-worker, rather than on a class action basis.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court verdict should provide definitive clarity for future judicial hearings on the legal presumption in lower courts.