2024 Emma Miller Awards
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 129 No 7, 27 September 2024, page 4.
Michelle Peters has been named this year’s QTU Emma Miller Award winner.
Queensland Unions has proudly hosted the annual Emma Miller Awards since 1997. This year’s event, held on Friday 6 September, was a tribute to the pioneering spirit of Emma Miller and a celebration of the commitment and achievements of contemporary, rank-and-file Union women.
It is a great honour to be a recipient of the Emma Miller Award. If you ever visit the Milton office, look out for the list of past QTU recipients on display in the foyer. Among those names you will find a former Vice-President and Honorary Vice-President, current and former members of Council and Executive, and QTU officers.
This year’s winner, Michelle Peters (pictured left with QTU President Cresta Richardson), is a committed and respected trade unionist and experienced senior teacher (step 2) from Emerald State School.
Michelle and is currently President of Central Queensland Area Council and the Central Highlands Branch, a branch in which she has held every position. Michelle has also attended State Council, State Conference and Women’s Conference as a delegate.
Each position held by Michelle has been a demonstration of her integrity and her values. She has lifted others up, built capability and has demonstrated an ironclad commitment to the QTU.
Michelle’s activism in Union and community campaigns is highly regarded, but she is not about the glory. She goes about her Union business balancing the professional and personal needs of members. She lives and breathes working conditions, and she educates her colleagues so that they know and exercise them too.
The awards are named in memory of Emma Miller, whom peers and loved ones called a humane woman of courage, fearless in expressing her convictions and staunch in her beliefs; a pioneer and propagandist of the emerging labour movement; a recognised leader of Queensland women’s fight for the right to vote; a friend and organiser of women workers and active supporter of the Trade Union Movement.
Emma is perhaps best known for her actions during Australia’s first ever general strike in 1912, which started in Brisbane after workers lost their jobs for wearing Union badges. That strike lasted five weeks and spread to other regional centres across Queensland.