According to Executive Digest, a new six-hour strike is planned for this month, demanding better working conditions and increased payments made to workers in the sector. The protest is being organised on social media, through WhatsApp.

According to Hans Melo, one of the organisers, it will be “the biggest strike ever for couriers working in Portugal, he told Diário de Notícias.

This time, between 6 pm and midnight, professionals in this sector will stop and will not deliver meals or food products. “The intention is not to create confusion, nor harm anyone, we just want to be able to have a voice”, he says.

Among the demands circulating between the groups, with more than a thousand members, are the minimum payment of three euros to couriers “for any delivery”, the payment of an additional 50 cents for each kilometer traveled over distances between 2 and 4.9 kilometers, and an extra euro per kilometer from 5 km onwards.

Also, couriers want “double orders to be paid individually”, and for platforms to stop allowing triple orders, that is, in which the same courier, through the platform's suggestion to the customer, has to make trips to three different restaurants or stores to collect products before leaving them at the final address.

The protest organisers argued that they feel “obliged to go beyond 12, 14 and even 16 hours of work a day”, in order to have a minimum acceptable salary, and complain that the platforms do not provide the necessary backpacks, shoes or clothing for the cold, or raincoats, so “everything comes out of the worker’s pocket”.