Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. 1 The value that one ought to work hard at one's job or duties. 2 The tendency to work hard at one's job or duties.
Wikipedia
Work ethic is a value based on hard work and diligence. Capitalists believe in the requirement of hard work and its ability to enhance character. In the context of class conflict, Marxists view the cultural ingrainment of this value as a means to delude the working class into creating more wealth for the upper class. In the Soviet Union, work ethic was seen as an ideal to strive for.
Usage examples of "work ethic".
When technological society mechanizes and replaces workers with machines, the work ethic states that the displaced workers must be looked on with contempt, allowed to starve, be treated like outcasts.
Call it the work ethic if you want to, but it's work by people like me that lets people like you collect your guaranteed annual income.
Does it have something to do with inscrutable Puritans and their unfathomable work ethic?
I have read, and trembled with disgust, of a philosophy called the work ethic.
Ah, well, I suppose your keeping a Protestant work ethic was too much to hope for.
He was a man with stern, unbending beliefs rooted in the Work Ethic.
Besides, it gave me a work ethic and values and a love for America that nobody's ever been able to take away from me.