Please first define what is "work in the usual course of business". What work that any contractor does, given that it is work contracted for a necessary economic purpose within the business of the contracting party, isn't within the latter's usual course of business?
Gig companies are market makers. By their very nature they are sitting in the middle of transactions and would be without a job without the transacting parties. Are all transacting parties therefore employees of market makers?
> What work that any contractor does, given that it is work contracted for a necessary economic purpose within the business of the contracting party, isn't within the latter's usual course of business?
There are existing, relatively easily identified examples: tech companies hiring (on contract) workers to provide janitorial or cafeteria services, retailers hiring contracts to fix plumbing or install fixtures in their stores, landlords hiring individuals to paint homes, and the list could go on.
The "usual course of business" has a clear legal definition under California law: "the regular and customary work of a business, performed within or upon the premises or worksite of the client employer."
In the case of Uber, "software development" and "drivers" clearly are required in the "ordinary and regular and expected course of dealings" in their marketplace. The company's entire premise is built on connecting drivers to passengers via a software platform: they don't have a business without both of those things. One might argue over whether drivers' cars count as a "worksite", or whether remote workers working from home count as working from a "worksite" or "on premise"--but those arguments would be thin and shallow.
Already the landlord hiring a painter example is getting tricky. That is required upkeep of the property. What about hiring a manager? What distinguishes that from hiring a painter?
Regardless, I see you specifically haven't addressed the market maker question. Please articulate a standard by which eBay's on-premise customary work is software development but a gig tech company's isn't. That's literally their regular and customary work of business that is performed on premise at HQ by a workforce that they can actually control (call to work and dismiss). There is no difference between those employees and drivers, huh? None at all? No market maker would have a business without participants doing their own work. The argument is neither thin nor shallow. It gets to the point of whether you can be in the business of making a market for contract labor or services. You seem to argue that that cannot be a business at all, and for what reason exactly?
Gig companies are market makers. By their very nature they are sitting in the middle of transactions and would be without a job without the transacting parties. Are all transacting parties therefore employees of market makers?