A top Massachusetts union leader ripped House Speaker Robert DeLeo in front of a crowd of union members and state lawmakers, sharply voicing his unhappiness with the longtime Democrat and top legislative leader.

Steve Tolman, the president of the state's AFL-CIO, spoke at the Labor Day breakfast in Chicopee on Friday and called DeLeo, who has served as House speaker since 2009, "no friend" of labor, according to one attendee.

"He really laid into him," another attendee said. "The crowd was eating it up," the attendee added. "I'm not sure the House members were."

Tolman, who served in the state Senate for seven terms before becoming the head of the state AFL-CIO in 2011, did not respond to calls to his cell phone and a text message on Sunday.

Tolman's pointed remarks came days after DeLeo lost two members of his leadership team to left-leaning opponents in Democratic primaries.

House Ways and Means chairman Jeffrey Sanchez and Assistant Majority Leader Byron Rushing, were ousted by Nika Elugardo and Jon Santiago, respectively. Elugardo, Sanchez's challenger, claimed Sanchez was closer to DeLeo than he was to his constituents.

Asked about Tolman's comments, DeLeo spokeswoman Catherine Williams pointed to the "grand bargain" bill passed by lawmakers and signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker earlier this year.

"The House is proud of its record of putting people to work by negotiating an unprecedented $15 dollar per hour minimum wage and the most progressive paid family leave program in the nation," she said in a statement. "And through budget and economic development legislation, the House led the way on job training, early education, and hospitality jobs across the state."

She also noted that DeLeo and Rep. Joseph Wagner, D-Chicopee, championed the 2011 expanded gambling law that led to creation of thousands of jobs at MGM Springfield.

"The speaker looks forward to continuing to work with the Western Mass. representatives and unions to ensure working people are well represented," she said.

Tolman appears to be turning up the pressure on DeLeo as the veteran lawmaker seeks another term as House speaker in January 2019. The Winthrop Democrat has already hit the record for longest continuously serving speaker in state history.

Tolman also voiced unhappiness about House leaders not taking up a wage theft bill and school funding legislation in the last hours of the formal legislative session earlier this year.

Separately, DeLeo had pledged a legislative response to the US Supreme Court ruling that public sector unions don't have a right to charge fees to non-members, but a bill passed by the Senate didn't end up surfacing in the House. DeLeo's office has said that's because there wasn't consensus among the labor unions on what the response should be.

Tolman suggested that DeLeo was protecting Baker as the governor seeks a second four-year term by not bringing up the wage theft and union fees bills, according to two attendees of the Labor Day breakfast.

Tolman appeared to build on his previous criticism about DeLeo and the speaker's leadership style, having told the State House News Service in August that he was "pissed off" about how the end of the formal legislative session played out.

"Something's wrong in there when one person, or two or three, is controlling everything," Tolman said at the time.

Material from State House News Service was used in this report.