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  Ray Small--who started his BIW career in 1928 as an Office Boy in the Drawing Room--recalls that sick leave was the major benefit derived from that first contract.
  "Back then," Ray says, "there was no sick leave, no vacation and no paid holidays. Nothing. You only got paid when you worked. My weekly pay check in 1928 was less than $8.00--not enough left to take a date out"
  "For years, I worked three nights a week and Saturday mornings--in addition, to my regular work schedule. No one I knew ever made an issue of not getting overtime pay. We were glad to get the money at all. In those days everyone was really pleased to have a job. I can remember a line starting at the Iron Works and going right up to the old Post Office (on Front Street) in the mornings people waiting to, get jobs.
  In 1932--the height of the Depression--long time BIW employee Rich McElman worked as an Apprentice in the Hull Drawing Room. He received $0.18 an hour and thought he was doing pretty well for himself, all things considered.
  A draftsman's life during the first third of the 20th century was very different from the typical BMDA member's work day today. Drawing boards were 9-foot pine planks and plans were drafted on linen cloth.
  The original Drafting Room was on the second floor of a building down by the old Main Gate. Ray's job as Office Boy included managing the Blueprint Room. "That was really something--running prints UP on those carbon lights that were always blinking out" he recalls "We ran them over the lights, developed them in a tank, hand-dried them on a rack and then raced them all over the yard."
  The 1920's version of today's Apprentice Program went like this: "After I'd been an Office Boy a while," Ray remember's "I got an assistant. As soon as he learned the ropes, they got him an assistant and put me on the board.They kept a steady flow of us going through that way--working under some real draftsmen.  Because we were just beginners they got the plans out pretty cheap. But at the same time, we were getting a lot of experience fast and getting pushed ahead fast. So, it worked both ways."

  Contract negotiations in the early days of the union were done differently from the way they are today. For one thing, the BMDA president and the president of the company always sat down together at the negotiating table for a face to face discussion. Jack Keegan, who joined the BMDA a year after it started, and who later served as its president from 1962 to 1975, describes those negotiations this way: "You got a 'yes' or a 'no' answer right then and there. You didn't have to wait three or four days to get your answer.
  The BMDA membership met once a month. More than half of the rank and file usually showed up. Rich McElman remembers those occasions as "riproaring". "Every meeting was a big supper meeting-with a bar beforehand. There were only a few of us then and everybody knew everybody by their first name. We were family in those days.
  "And then there were the parties. "If we had sixty or seventy dollars in the treasury, we'd have a party. We never let that money build up too high. Invite the whole gang, go out to the country club and have a wingding."

  Once America entered World War II life changed at BIW. For one thing, wages as well as prices were regulated by the U.S. government. In those days, top money in the yard was $1.20 an hour. If you were lucky enough to be classified as a "Specialist", your pay could jump to $1.40 an hour.
The war also brought with it an increase in the length of the work week. Forty-eight hours was the law and Saturday became just another work day. There was, after all, an enemy to fight, and shipbuilding in Bath proceeded at a frantic pace.
  For many workers, the most startling change of all was the influx of women into the shipyard. With so many of its men fighting overseas, America was forced to turn to its wives and sweethearts to build ships. When women made their first appearance in the Drawing Room, their official classification was "draftsman." On the whole, most of the men responded favorably to this new turn of events. As Rich McElman says "It was great! A real change from looking at just guys for all those years."
  At the end of the war, many of the draftsmen especially the women left the yard. Longtime BMDA member Al Thompson was one of those actually Laid off "Three of us in the Hull Machinery Drawing Room were laid off. That was in 1946. I was called back in a couple of months but one of the other guys didn't come back for a year.
  During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the National Council of Marine Draftsmen gradually began losing members as shipyards closed down. Though the Council continued meeting into the 1960s, several of its remaining member unions dropped out after joining up with AFL unions. When the Council finally dissolved in the late 1960s, the BMDA was the last union left in it.

  In January of 1962, the BMDA was certified by the National Labor Relations Board.  This action sent Hyde Windlass employees into BlW's engineering division, making them automatically members of the BMDA.
  The BMDA has had only one strike in its 50-year history and that was in 1967. Rich McElman was on the negotiating team at that time. He remembers it this way:
"The Negotiating Committee took management's offer back to the rank and file and they voted that if we couldn't get something better than what they had offered us, we should go on strike. So, we went back to the company and said, 'We've taken a vote and the people said if you don't do any better than what you've already offered, were going to strike.' The company didn't think we had the guts. They told us we weren't going to get anything better. So we went out."
  The strike lasted three weeks. There was no strike fund. Former BMDA president Jack Keegan remembers, "We used the treasury for people who needed money for food, rent, necessities. It wasn't much, just enough to get by. If a guy walked on the line, he got paid."
  In the end, the union did get a better offer from management l¢ an hour better. They also picked up some additional vacation days. Management's offer of a better pension plan was rejected by the rank and file because of the financial cost involved. Ultimately, the workers returned to their drawing boards and the business of shipbuilding picked up where it had left off.
  In 1987, the Mold Loft joined the BMDA, adding another hundred people to the union. Since 1986, BMDA membership has more than tripled, bringing the total number today at close to 900. Today the Bath Marine Draftsmen's Association remains the only independent shipbuilding design union in the country.