The Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) has said it will adopt a non-confrontational approach to industry relations in 2003, the union's president Melissa Gilbert has said.

Gilbert's end-of-year message to the union's 98,000 members comes after three years of running disputes with the film industry, including a threatened strike in 2001.

"My core goal is to run a boardroom focused on restoring standards that will gain the pride and satisfaction of members and ensure respect in the industry in which we work," she said.

Gilbert, who found fame as child star with the role of Laura Ingalls Wilder on hit TV series Little House on the Prairie, said the major issues for 2003 included:

• Fighting "runaway" production to cheaper foreign locations
  
• Payment of residuals for actors' work in films released on DVD and video
  
• Improved relations with sister union the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists

Conciliatory

"I continue to steer us away from hyperbole, rhetoric and posturing in the boardroom so that our thinking can be done in an atmosphere of open minds and open hearts," she said.

SAG will be negotiating a new advertisements' contract in 2003 and Gilbert stressed the talks will be conciliatory.

"Negotiating fair wages and working conditions is the primary commitment of SAG."

But the actress made no mention of a continuing dispute with Hollywood talent agents over their potential ownership by film companies.

SAG members rejected a proposal to allow film companies to own talent agencies last year.

Trade newspaper Variety described the issue as the "most divisive" facing the union.

Gilbert took over at SAG in 2002, and said: "I stepped into office in a union beleaguered from without and within."