There’s a subtle difference.

Contractors are supposed to be relatively independent. You give them the outcome (a new deck), a deadline (June 1st), and any stipulations (no work after 9pm) and they organize the work however they see fit. One guy could work steadily for two weeks, or a bunch of staff could show up and knock out the deck in two days.

Employees are supposed to take more direction. You can tell an employee that she must start at 8am each day. She will dig holes for the footings on the north and west sides first, then start cutting stringers while the other guy finishes the south and east sides.

Yea, the definition of contractor that often gets thrown around in these discussions seems to exclude most real world contractors. I’ve worked as a construction contractor and a software contractor, and I did not get to set my hours in either one. It seems like the legal system is out of touch with the world of business.

The real definition of a contractor may be “an employment relationship in which the worker does not want to assert employee rights”. In my case I did not want to be an employee because contractors got paid more for the same work, and I liked taking time off between gigs.

You can't make those stipulations on contractors whose entire relationship with the company is built on on-demand providing of on-demand rides.

You can attempt to rewrite the contracts to change the allowed and encouraged behaviors, but the more restrictions added, the more it starts to smell like an employer-employee relationship--and that will kill Uber and Lyft stone dead.