After a Salon report depicting Ed Schultz’s handling of a dispute between a group of NBC workers and the network led to criticism of the host, he took to the airwaves Thursday to address the backlash. As Salon reported Thursday morning, workers at Peacock Productions have attempted to land meetings with MSNBC’s top hosts in an effort to win their support — and successfully managed to meet with Chris Hayes, while Schultz gave Salon a comment that elicited some negative reactions.

In response, Schultz addressed the matter in the first segments of his radio show Thursday afternoon, professing his vocal support for organized labor and slamming Salon’s reporting, but not specifically addressing alleged union-busting by the NBC Universal-owned company Peacock Productions.

“Are they that freaking stupid that they don’t know where I stand?” Schultz asked listeners. “Wow.” Schultz also suggested he wasn’t necessarily “able to influence” someone “of authority,” and asked “why should I put myself in jeopardy through an email?”

As Salon reported Thursday morning, workers at Peacock Productions charge that after they started organizing with the Writers Guild of America–East, the company held mandatory group and one-on-one anti-union meetings; suggested that unionization could lead to the company being dissolved; discouraged employees from talking to pro-union co-workers; discriminated against pro-union workers in assigning work; and used a spurious legal argument to get the results of a union election impounded by the National Labor Relations Board. (NBC has not provided comment on those allegations, following a series of inquiries since Tuesday.) In response, the AFL-CIO posted a petition, hosted by MoveOn Civic Action, asking for public support from five prime-time MSNBC hosts: Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Al Sharpton and Schultz.

While none of the hosts publicly declared support for the the campaign, several people who were in the room told Salon that Hayes recently met privately with Peacock Productions workers at the WGA-E office and heard their concerns. Hayes, Maddow, O’Donnell and Sharpton did not respond to inquiries for Thursday’s story.

But Schultz sent a two-sentence response to Salon’s request for comment on WGA-E’s request for his support: “Moveon.org has never been an ally of Ed Schultz, why should I help you with a story? Give me a reason.” He did not respond to a follow-up email. (MoveOn did not immediately reply to a Thursday afternoon inquiry.)

Schultz’s response, printed in Thursday’s article, drew him some criticism on Twitter.

On his Thursday afternoon national radio show, Schultz defended himself and critiqued his critics. At the start of his three-hour show (not affiliated with MSNBC), he told listeners they could call in if “you want to talk to me directly. Maybe you’ve seen something in the Twitter world that … you’re not really sure about …” He said he was “not gonna punch down,” and that he had “always supported people when it comes to collective bargaining” and “never wavered one bit ever.”

Then Schultz said, “If you’ve got issues or you’d like to call me on something, this is the format – you’re not gonna see me on anybody else’s television show, you’re not gonna hear me on anybody’s else’s radio show – I have plenty to do.” He said there were “a lot of things out there that people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” and that he couldn’t “clear the breach with one phone call” or “one returned tweet,” but “I can be here consistently to give you a real sense of who I am, what I believe in, and cutting right to the chase.”

“And so that’s where I’m going to leave all the nastiness that is out there,” Schultz went on, “and I’m not going to lower myself to people who just have got employment envy, income envy, exposure envy, platform envy.” He warned that “there are going to be minions out there that are going to twist and turn and spin and have expectations without going to the source.” Schultz then turned to the phones (“very seldom do I take calls in the very first segment,” he noted, “but I’m willing to do that today”). After indicating no calls immediately arrived, Schultz said sarcastically, “You mean they don’t want to take on Big Eddie here? I mean, I just find that hard to believe.”

A minute later, Schultz took a call from someone asking if it was true that he’d “taken a quarter million dollars from the unions to be their spokesman” over two years; Schultz answered he was “not taking anything from anybody,” but “if people want to advertise on my website, am I supposed to shut my business down?”

Schultz’s second caller asked him, “Why is Josh Eidelson [the author of this piece] not on your show today instead of hiding behind Twitter about a controversy that’s trying to pit progressive media against progressive media?” (Note: I had not been invited on Schultz’s show.) After Schultz asked who he was talking about and the caller described the morning story about Hayes’ meeting with Peacock Productions workers, Schultz said, “I don’t advertise every meeting that I have. No one knows who I’ve met with. No one.” Schultz then asked, “Do you think the management and ownership” of MSNBC and his radio show “know who Ed Schultz is? Do you think they know what I stand for? Do they think they know what my position is? Of course they do. Absolutely they do. It is unvarnished, OK? It is – it is unvarnished.”