BATH – The members of Local 6, the shipbuilders’ union at Bath Iron Works, got a surprise phone call Monday.

It was from Sen. Olympia Snowe, who called to say she was impressed by the work being done at the shipyard and to offer her support.

“She said that she’s here for us,” said Mike Keenan, president of the local chapter of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO. “It was really pleasing.”

It was also a bit of good news in what has been a string of bad news for the shipyard workers. Tuesday, 20 union members of Local 6 were notified that they were being laid off. Keenan said that brings the total to 94 who have been laid off over the past couple of months.

Additionally, 66 union members of the Bath Marine Draftsmen’s Association were laid off last week, he said.

Officially, the layoffs are attributed to a decrease in work, but Keenan said that doesn’t make sense. The people who are being laid off do the hands-on work of shipbuilding. Tuesday’s layoffs affected pneumatic operators – the people who remove paint and grind tanks – in preparation for other work.

Keenan said he estimates that that department is already eight weeks behind schedule.

“I think somebody is making an error in planning,” he said.

And he worries there are more layoffs in the future. A letter sent last week from BIW President Dugan Shipway warmly congratulating everyone for their work on the USS Nitze warship had the unintended consequence of foreshadowing more layoffs.

“Because they (laid-off workers) have been part of the team that continues to build good ships – the rest of us continue to have the opportunity to be here,” the letter states. “Some will leave this week and next, some left months ago, and unfortunately over the next several years more will also depart because of a lack of work.”

Local 6 membership peaked in 1989 at 6,500 members; today it has 4,200.

Keenan said Snowe’s support is especially critical to help the shipyard stay on schedule for work on DDX contracts, the successor to the shipyard’s federal DDG contracts under which destroyers such as Nitze were built. When Shipway took over the yard in 2003, he said he was concerned there could be a lag of up to 18 months between the end of the DDG program and the beginning of the DDX.

This summer Congress voted to approve a $417.5 billion defense budget, which earmarked $3.45 billion for three DDG destroyers. The budget also included $1.4 billion to develop the new DDX destroyers; BIW is in line to build the second ship.