Renting out Glovo accounts: delivery work that dodges the work permit

Glovo accounts for rent: delivery work without a permit

It's almost eleven at night and a bike waits at a Barcelona street corner. The courier checks his phone: the order is late and the shift drags on. Like this, thousands of identical trips keep the last mile of food delivery running every night, a business in which the account of a worker with papers is rented out to someone who has none. The rest — the language, the work permit, the shared housing — shows up as a symptom, not a cause.

Self-employed on paper, wage earner in practice

The first piece of the puzzle is the employment status. In food delivery there is no payroll contract, no fixed schedule, no overtime: workers register as self-employed and bill per order. That boundary turns the job into a legal limbo and fuels the usual questions. Who answers for the minimum wage, the hours, or an accident on the road? Nobody answers with a signed document.

The work permit nobody ever applies for

The question is asked out loud and answers itself. If language skills were really assessed when granting a permit, what happens on the street would make no sense. The hypothesis gaining ground is simpler: there is no permit to apply for, just an account to rent. The account holder with papers hands over their courier profile and keeps their cut; the one pedalling takes the rest. Under this arrangement, the authorities never see an application, just one more self-employed person on the register.

The platform that never asks

The criticism doesn't stop at the couriers. It points at Glovo and its chain of subcontractors: the claim is that one courier registers as self-employed, subcontracts others — allegedly without papers — and the company looks the other way. They split the crumbs, sums up the most repeated thesis. Alongside that, the reproach aimed at the unions for focusing on political negotiation instead of pursuing these pockets of fraud.

Barcelona taxis: the accusation without evidence

There is a separate chapter for taxis. An accusation circulates, with no complaint or known investigation, that certain taxi ranks in Barcelona are controlled by organised groups that pressure local drivers not to park there. No name, no date, no public ruling. Just the story.

Who ends up paying the price

The most repeated argument is that the model doesn't hurt the company or the customer, but the local worker. Cheap delivery rests on a chain of informal subcontractors, and the one who ends up competing with that structure is the local self-employed courier, with fees, insurance and invoices to declare. The complaint, at its core, isn't aimed at those who arrive: it's aimed at those who place them.

The closing detail is one nobody knows where to file. Up to twenty people living in the same house, according to the accounts circulating, and a one-euro tip as the only recognition for whoever climbs the stairs. If that happens in a single flat, the system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed.