Slavery still a prominent practice in U.S.

What comes to your mind when you hear "fair-trade goods"? You might think of what fair trade works against - the coffee, chocolate and clothing industries that treat workers unfairly. Well, add products like oranges and tomatoes farmed in Florida, right here in the United States, to the list of goods produced through extreme exploitation. Some of those tomato slices you all see and put on your sandwiches are products of modern-day slavery.In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court's most recently tried case of slavery, U.S. v. Navarrete in 2008, found Florida employers guilty of beating, threatening and locking up their workers, and holding them in involuntary servitude. Even in our politcally correct age, it appears there is slavery in Florida. Florida farmworkers are victims of "modern-day slavery," forced to work under sweatshop conditions and deprived of basic labor rights. According to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based worker organization in Immokalee, Fla., Florida tomato pickers earn about 45 cents per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. This rate hasn't changed much since 1978. This means that at today's rate, workers have to pick more than 2.5 tons of tomatoes just to earn Florida's minimum wage for a 10-hour work day. Workers can't even afford the time to wash their pesticide-soaked hands before eating lunch - the lunch they packed at 5 a.m. to begin a day where work is not guaranteed, respect is denied and slavery is a reality.