The rise and contestation of platform capitalism: Evidence from two food delivery blackouts in Malaysia

The vulnerability and inequality of on-demand gig workers around the world are epitomised by the insecure rights that arise from the legal implications of their status. They are the biggest victims of capital accumulation under platform capitalism, which has skilfully exploited this worker–employer relationship. The resistance of gig workers is essential to counter the powerful structural control structures of platform capitalism. However, theoretical developments in the ideology and resistance of the industrial relations processes that overshadow platform capitalism and empirical studies of them in non-Western contexts are underdeveloped. This study develops an analytical framework in the process of platform capitalism versus gig worker resistance and examines longitudinal resistance and changes and challenges to platform capitalism. A longitudinal analysis of food delivery boycotts for Malaysian p-hailing gig workers in 2022 and 2024 produced different results and complexities in terms of the robustness and continuity of this resistance. The study finds theoretical fluidity in the robustness of workers’ commodification processes under platform capitalism, the focus on organising motives and demands of resistance, and two routes of resistance to the powerful platform balance of power.