"If denying workers the rights of employees is the only way for workers to keep their jobs and keep the company profitable, is the rideshare business model ethical?"

Can there be better evidence that customers, not managers, are the real power behind the mistreatment of workers?

But I agree that the drivers are not beyond self-help This is the internet age. We don't really need unions for some things. Ride services seem particularly vulnerable to strikes by consent. If enough drivers stay home, enough users will be inconvenienced to make a difference. It's not like the company can load up on inventory. (I see this as more likely than competing apps emerging, but the idea is the same: bargaining power is an existential fact, not a legal concept.)

There's a great passage in Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" that captures the state of play:

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Most people are aware of the curious struggle which arose during the Federal war between the guns and armor of iron-plated ships. The result was the entire reconstruction of the navy of both the continents; as the one grew heavier, the other became thicker in proportion. The Merrimac, the Monitor, the Tennessee, the Weehawken discharged enormous projectiles themselves, after having been armor-clad against the projectiles of others. In fact they did to others that which they would not they should do to them—that grand principle of immortality upon which rests the whole art of war.

Now if Barbicane was a great founder of shot, Nicholl was a great forger of plates; the one cast night and day at Baltimore, the other forged day and night at Philadelphia. As soon as ever Barbicane invented a new shot, Nicholl invented a new plate; each followed a current of ideas essentially opposed to the other. Happily for these citizens, so useful to their country, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles separated them from one another, and they had never yet met. Which of these two inventors had the advantage over the other it was difficult to decide from the results obtained. By last accounts, however, it would seem that the armor-plate would in the end have to give way to the shot; nevertheless, there were competent judges who had their doubts on the point.

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There are indeed more shots to be fired in this war...