Distributive justice begins with a just wage. Does a legal living wage cost "jobs"? Absolutely. So do laws against fraud -- in the short term. But we clear these bad jobs to make room for good jobs with good businesses -- if you can't make aluminum without paying more than a buck an hour, move over.
Unions are an essential (though abused) tool for defending a living wage. But income is unreliable without ownership. Distributism focuses on who owns the tools that make wealth; a company should be owned by its workers.
The traditional and best model is the family business. Apparently Wal-Mart is a "family business," but I'm referring to a family working for themselves. Such families have the most power to meet their own needs, and thus the most freedom to choose how to live.
True, even the most generously endowed Catholic family might have trouble assembling an ocean liner, but life isn't all the Queen Mary. There are many economic needs that could be -- and used to be -- met by family businesses. Those "efficient" corporations might not be so if we were to cut their billions in public subsidies.
On a level playing field, family businesses would thrive. And furthermore, when needed, family businesses could join forces.This would still leave aside projects like ocean liners, but for such needs, there's another just model: the co-operative, or co-op, a "jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise." The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) explains,
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Only in the co-operative enterprise are all three interests [ownership, control, and beneficiary] vested directly in the hands of the user. . . . Because co-operatives are owned and democratically-controlled by their members . . . [they] balance the need for profitability with the needs of their members and the wider interests of the community.
The basic mechanism is similar to representative government. As a worker, your committee sets tasks in your workshop or department. You also choose a representative for the next level up.
In practice, co-ops are far more nuanced. For the Mondragon co-operative for example, the highest authority is the general assembly of worker-members. This elects not only a governing council and the council president, but also an audit committee over finances and representatives to the social council, which "generally represents frontline workers' perspective." Mondragon is a co-op of over 260 smaller co-ops, so each also elects representatives to the Co-operative Congress. Power is balanced and decentralized, according to the principle of subsidiarity: Every function is controlled at the most local level possible.