Portion of payroll taxes is ~7.5%, plus an extra 2.5-10% for workers comp/etc depending on your rates.
If they had to reclass as employees, they would just raise prices to end consumer 10-20% to compensate (or fund it via other's money like they're doing now to price out rest of market).
They'd also put a cap on hours per week so drivers couldn't drive more than 30 hours per week. Companies aren't legally required to give benefits to part-time workers (up to 30 hours).
The big draw of independent contractors is that you've just converted labor from a fixed cost to a variable cost. There are tons of Uber/Lyft drivers (namely, anyone not doing it full-time, which is the majority of drivers) who prefer this since they can drive as much or as little as they want.
If they had to reclass as employees, they would just raise prices to end consumer 10-20% to compensate (or fund it via other's money like they're doing now to price out rest of market).
They'd also put a cap on hours per week so drivers couldn't drive more than 30 hours per week. Companies aren't legally required to give benefits to part-time workers (up to 30 hours).
The big draw of independent contractors is that you've just converted labor from a fixed cost to a variable cost. There are tons of Uber/Lyft drivers (namely, anyone not doing it full-time, which is the majority of drivers) who prefer this since they can drive as much or as little as they want.