After 45 years of long and dedicated service to the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union (CCWU) general secretary Grantley Culbard has retired and has challenged the younger members of the union to step forward and shoulder the responsibility of leadership.
The union said in a statement yesterday that Ann Anderson who was identified by Culbard to understudy him has assumed the post of general Secretary and chief executive officer of the union. She was elected by the union’s general council in June this year to succeed Culbard.
The union said that at its first triennial delegates conference in August 2007, Culbard had expressed a desire to retire when he reached the age of 65 later that year but was persuaded to continue a little longer.
The statement said he gave committed service to the trades union movement in Guyana as well as the Caribbean. Culbard was trained locally, regionally and internationally.
Following the deaths of Gordon Todd and Birchmore Philadelphia who were also CCWU stalwarts, Culbard returned from overseas to take up the post of general secretary/CEO.
Prior to that he also served as branch chairman, field secretary/grievance officer. He left to fulfil a contract with the Caribbean Congress of Labour in Barbados, where he headed the research department until 1998. The statement said that while there Culbard was instrumental in the production of a periodic magazine Labour Viewpoint and two manuals for Caribbean trade unionists. One of the manuals dealt with Economics and Research for Collective Bargaining while the other was produced after a study was done on the operations of the industrial courts of Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua and Barbuda.
Culbard is currently also vice-president of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana, but that term comes to an end next month.
Anderson who takes over from Culbard was identified by him since 2004 to be his understudy. She joined the union back in 1992 and rose to become a branch official in one year. She was branch secretary in 1994 while a worker at Guyana Stores then in 2004 was appointed administrative assistant at the union.
She is also the vice-chairperson of the International Transport Workers Federation Women’s Committee and the Caribbean representative for women of that same body.
She too was trained locally and internationally and the union has described her as well prepared to be CEO — a first for women in the 61 years of the CCWU.
