LOS ANGELES » Troubles on the West Coast waterfront are getting worse.

Amid an increasingly damaging labor dispute, 29 West Coast seaports that handle about $1 trillion of goods annually will be mostly closed four of the next five days.

There were two bits of good news — particularly for Hawaii — in that the temporary suspension on servicing cargo ships won’t apply to domestic carriers including Matson Inc. And late Wednesday night, Pacific Air Cargo said it will operate an additional B747 Freighter service on its Los Angeles-Honolulu route that will provide almost half a million pounds of additional freight capacity between the West Coast and Hawaii. The aircraft will depart Los Angeles on Sunday at 2:30 a.m. PST and arrive in Honolulu at 5:50 a.m. local time. The return flight will depart Honolulu on Monday at 2:30 p.m. local time and arrive into Los Angeles at 10 p.m. PST.

The cargo ship announcement came Wednesday from the association representing companies that operate marine terminals where dockworkers move containers of goods on and off massive oceangoing vessels, eventually transferring the containers onto trucks or trains for distribution nationwide.

Companies said they won’t hire crews to load or unload ships Thursday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday — when they’d have to pay Presidents Day holiday or weekend wages to dockworkers they accuse of slowing their work to gain leverage in contract talks.

Employers do not want to pay hourly rates that are at least 50 percent above normal, which would bring a few of the highest-paid dockworkers to close to $100 per hour, according to Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Asso­ciation.

Instead, terminal operators could decide to hire smaller crews that would focus on moving already-unloaded containers into the flow of commerce. Full crews would still service military and cruise ships, and any cargo ships bound for Hawaii — but these are small operations compared with work on container ships that are as long as some skyscrapers are tall.

Those ships bring in car parts, furniture, clothing, electronics — just about anything made in Asia and destined for U.S. consumers. Ships then take goods back, exports that include perishables such as rice, hay, nuts and produce.

It has been a struggle for months to get cargo across the docks amid historically bad levels of congestion.

Matson, which brings most goods to Hawaii, has been affected, but not as much as foreign carriers. "There have been some delays, but not as severe," said Matson spokesman Jeff Hull.

Hull said Matson has experienced delays of one or two days compared with two or three weeks for some international cargo ships.

Employers blame crowded docks on longshoremen they say have staged work slowdowns since November; dockworkers deny slowing down and say cargo is moving slowly for reasons dockworkers do not control, including a shortage of truck beds to take containers to retailers’ distribution warehouses.

In recent days, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union said companies are exaggerating to cut dockworker shifts and pressure negotiators into a contract agreement.

In response to Wednesday’s move by employers, the union noted that longshoremen were not hired to load or unload vessels last weekend, and that the sides have not met since Friday.

"The union is standing by ready to negotiate, as we have been for the past several days," union President Robert McEllrath said in a written statement. He suggested the maritime association is "trying to sabotage negotiations."

Whatever the causes of the congestion, containers that used to take two or three days to hit the highway have been taking a week or more. Meanwhile, about three dozen ships are at anchor, awaiting a berth in ports in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington state.

Negotiations between the two sides are scheduled to reconvene Thursday.