May Day celebrations this year will take place against the background of Numsa and Zwelinzima Vavi being expelled from labour federation Cosatu. It will take place in the context that over the past 30 years many workers' victories and achievements have been undermined and set back due to the neo-liberal onslaught.The labour force has been restructured and wages pressed downward through casualisation, labour brokers, retrenchments, evictions and the displacement of farmworkers.In many ways, workers' conditions are being set back to the 19th century, when May Day was born. At the time, workers of the world defended themselves through a strike movement started in the US by militant-left trade unions in Chicago in 1886. That strike movement, for the working day to be cut from an average of 16 hours to eight hours, became an international rallying call by 1890.The working class united through general strikes in the US and Europe.May Day is therefore the time of year when we, as a labour movement, have to assess our achievements and setbacks over the past year.As members of unions and the broader working class we need to confront a harsh reality.On the one hand we are faced with worsening social and economic conditions - widening and deepening poverty, high unemployment, low wages, and increasing personal debt, with the costs of food, transport, housing, and schooling rising.But this is happening all over the world and economic inequality has reached extreme levelsFrom Ghana to Germany, Italy to Indonesia, the gap between rich and poor is widening.In 2013, seven out of 10 people lived in countries where economic inequality was worse than 30 years ago, and last year Oxfam calculated that just 85 people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity.Today South Africa is the most unequal society in the world, with the richest 1% owning 44% of the wealth.More than 50% of South Africans live in abject poverty and 70% of black people can be regarded as poor.This is our crisis and we have been unable to defend ourselves and confront the government and employers because of the crisis in Cosatu, the original shield and spear of the labour movement.Today, nearly 120 years after the May Day eight-hour working day movement, as Cosatu, we, the nine unions who have taken a principled stance against sweetheart unionism and corruption, are battling to protect our major achievements: Cosatu's political and organisational independence, our unity and our capacity to fight the capitalist bosses and their ANC government.Cele is Numsa's second deputy president..