From Uber's perspective, their company only exists on the back of a large volunteer workforce that use their ride-hailing company app and platform to carry out piece work. The Uber company growth and performance relies on this workforce to deliver the service. Uber wants to treat this non-unionized group as a contractor arrangement which gives them the maximum flexibility and minimum employee commitments. The challenge is that a virtual business needs physical workers, at least until self-driving cars come along, and that's another whole story. But as lessons of Uber pulling out of China and with the continued competition against Lyft in the US, their business model is predicated on an available workforce to operate locally.