PEORIA, Ill. (AP)—Caterpillar Inc. suspended 130 United Auto Workers members Wednesday for reporting to work in shirts bearing anti-company slogans as the union intensified its campaign to disrupt production.

The company has banned from its plants and property shirts calling for the replacement of Chairman Donald V. Fites and other unspecified ‘‘disruptive clothing.’‘ The union has challenged the ban, sending workers to their jobs wearing anti-Fites shirts and staging rallies on company property with scores of shirt-wearing UAW members.

That has resulted in trespassing arrests and disciplinary action, such as the suspensions of the workers who wore anti-Fites T-shirts to the Mapleton foundry Wednesday.

The T-shirt dispute may seem minor, but it’s become the latest battle in the sour struggle between the union and Peoria-based Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of earth-moving equipment.

‘‘There’s no way they can run that foundry missing half their day shift,’‘ said Don Brown, a UAW official and Mapleton foundry employee. ‘‘The foundry is all screwed up today.’‘

Caterpillar spokesman Bill Lane denied any disruption occurred, saying the company used overtime to maintain full production at the foundry, which has about 750 employees.

That debate aside, the union appears to be gaining valuable sympathetic publicity with the recent arrests and work suspensions of T-shirt wearing members.

Dan Polsby, a labor expert at Northwestern University, said public sentiment shaped largely by an aggressive Caterpillar public relations campaign played a big role in last April’s collapse of the union’s 163-day strike. The company threatened to permanently replace 12,600 strikers, and they returned under the conditions of Caterpillar’s last contract offer.

‘‘That’s where the strike crumbled,’‘ Polsby said. ‘‘People said ‘cut this out.’ Now, if the union is able to recast matters and convince people ‘yes, this really is a bad company’ it could be an enormous benefit to them in their relation to the community.‘’

It could even provide the union with a basis for renewing the strike, Polsby said.

Union officials won’t discuss such things. Brown would only say the union will continue exercising its constitutional rights. He noted that regional offices of the National Labor Relations Board have objected to the company’s T-shirt ban and a hearing is pending before the full board.

Lane said Wednesday’s suspensions were for insubordination and are indefinite. He said the company will follow its ‘‘progressive discipline’‘ policies, which could eventually lead to firing of workers after repeated offenses.

T-shirt-wearing UAW members also rallied on foundry property Wednesday, but there no arrests, perhaps because a judge refused to grant Caterpillar a temporary restraining order barring non-employees from trespassing on company property. The circuit judge scheduled a May 10 hearing on whether a preliminary injunction against trespassing should be issued.

About 130 union members, including UAW secretary-treasurer Bill Casstevens, were arrested April 17 in a rally at a Caterpillar factory in Mossville.

‘‘They are engaging in civil disobedience and forcing the company to have them arrested and put in jails on the order of Martin Luther King Jr.,’‘ said Ronald Peters, head of labor relations education at the University of Illinois.

‘‘If it is a staged media event, as the company says, it certainly appears to be successful,’‘ Peters said.