Madalena Caldeira warns that the presumption of employment may also apply to intermediaries | ECO

The Government wants to simplify the recognition of employment contracts between couriers and intermediaries. The labour reform removes the explicit distinction between digital platforms and intermediaries, grouping them under the notion of “beneficiary of the activity.”

The Executive’s proposal includes, among its more than 100 amendments to the Labour Code, the repeal of the rules that required first severing the courier’s link with the platform before analysing the relationship with the intermediary. In this new framework, “there has been a change in the terminology used: instead of expressly distinguishing between a digital platform and an intermediary, the law now generically refers to the ‘beneficiary of the activity’,” explains Madalena Caldeira, partner in charge of the Labour Law department at Gómez-Acebo & Pombo’s Lisbon office.

Caldeira adds that “the presumption of employment therefore no longer operates automatically in relation to the digital platform and may also apply to the intermediary, provided that they are established as the effective beneficiary of the activity.”

With this change, the Public Prosecutor’s Office will be able to bring employment recognition actions directly against intermediaries, which, according to experts, will make it easier to identify the true subordinate relationship in a sector characterised by subcontracting and intermediation in courier activity.

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