This is incorrect.

Determining whether someone is an independent contractor has always involved multiple factors. Flexibility of working hours is just one of the factors.

You cannot say categorically that having the ability to choose your own hours makes you an independent contractor rather than an employee.

Other factors include:

* What level of control does the employer have in dictating HOW the work is done?

* Is the worker performing work that is outside the usual course of the employer's business?

* Is it customary for the work to be performed as an independent trade?

HOW the work is done is chosen by the driver. They are free to take a different route

The employer's business is connecting cars to riders with software. The driver's usual job is HR, and he uses the lyft service to make extra cash on his way home.

The last point is not something that determines a contractor. What you choose to do for money does not have to be a trade. It can be anything.

There are no working hours. You don't get paid by lyft for hours you 'work.' You get paid for engagements you pick -the rides. Getting paid per project, not for time you put in makes you a contractor for that gig.

What if you can't choose the price, you don't know the details of the work before accepting and get punished for not doing enough work?

That doesn't sound very independent to me.

You know it's a ride with pickup in an area. You are free to take the gig or not. You get paid for the gig. That is you choosing your work. That makes it a contract. People who do more work can be compensated better -that has nothing to do with whether or not its a contract.

W2 means you get paid salary or by the hour. Have you ever seen a W2 stub? It doesn't have 'projects' on it. It has a pay rate. Becoming W2 for drivers means they have a salary, and a bonus. So now they're hourly employees. This is literally on the W3 form employers submit to the IRS every year. Not knowing the paid amount before hand is one of the things making it a contract, yet you're claiming not knowing how much you will get paid makes it W2. Amazing gymnastics.

The idea of it being a "contract" isn't in dispute. It's about whether these employees can legally be classified as "INDEPENDENT contractors". They aren't independent in the normal sense of word (I'm paying particular attention to your gymnastics around how workers can't specify their rate) nor in the legal sense.

They don't have a rate. That's the whole point. A W2 employee has to have a rate, hourly/annual/weekly/etc. They have a salary or rate. A 1099 is the only way you can charge per project instead of per rate. When you determine how much you get paid for the project you yourself pick and start is irrelevant to whether you're independent and 1099. In fact if you include contractors working on your house repairs, you have an estimate and agree on the total well into the project.

paid per project you choose yourself =contractor. salary or rate =employee.

determining how much you get paid has nothing to do with employee or not. in fact, as I keep stating, not knowing how much you get paid literally makes you not an employee.

Each individual ride has a price/rate, and the workers of Uber can't set their own rates. Yeah, I know workers don't have a single hourly wage. Pointing that out doesn't obscure the fact that Uber and Lyft dictate completely the most important aspect of working for them. This is totally different from the idea of working as an independent contractor both in spirit and legally.

And the employer is free to "assign" you the very "shift" you yourself picked. Every time.

The dissonance here is amazing. Uber and Lyft literally started operating in cities and countries where rideshare was explicitly outlawed, hoping they would come around. But now that they had a year to prepare for this, all they found it in themselves to do is pick up their toys and go home? Don't fall for it.