BATH – Members of the second-largest union at Bath Iron Works declined to vote on whether to walk out in support of striking machinists because it was never asked to do so, a union official said.

The Bath Marine Draftsmen’s Association, representing more than 800 designers, engineers and technical clerks, instead voted Saturday to set up a strike assistance committee that would organize food drives, letter-writing campaigns and fund-raising efforts, said Mary Cunningham, president of the association.

BIW is expected to resume negotiations within the next few days with the 4,800-member Machinists’ union, which voted Aug. 27 to reject a three-year contract proposal because of concerns about wages, benefits and job security.

The company’s second contract offer was rejected Sept. 3.

As draftsmen left an hour-long meeting Saturday, some commented on why they didn’t take a strike vote. “We offered, but they didn’t want us to go out,” said electrical designer Frank Walton, referring to the strikers.

Cunningham, whose 800-member union is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, said leadership for the strikers never asked for a sympathy strike.

“If and when S6 (the striking union) asks us to take a vote on a sympathy strike, we will promptly convene a meeting to consider the question,” she said.

But leaders of the union for the machinists and aerospace workers contradicted those statements.

“We asked them to strike with us,” said Tony Provost, business representative for Local S6 of the machinists’ union. “We wanted them to stand beside us and take on the company.”

Provost said he thinks negotiations between the two unions faltered. In a meeting Friday night of the unions’ leaders, the draftsmen tried to exact a promise from the Local S6, Provost said. If the draftsmen went on strike next spring, Provost said, they wanted the larger union to follow them.

“We told them that if that happened, we would need to get authorization,” Provost said.

The company, meanwhile, took out full-page newspaper ads this weekend that challenged worker perceptions of health-insurance costs. The ads also claimed that BIW workers are better paid than their counterparts at similar facilities in Mississippi and Virginia.