DETROIT (AP) — Some 45,000 dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports are returning to work after their union reached a deal to suspend a strike that could have caused shortages and higher prices if it had dragged on.

OMAHA — Organizers of a November ballot measure that would require Nebraska businesses to provide employees with a minimum level of paid sick leave announced Wednesday that they had secured the public backing of more than 200 businesses.

Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.

On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for Laborfest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.