For the middle-class American men Lamont studied, work meant a profession or career, a frequently stimulating and often fulfilling sphere of activity that had to be balanced against the demands of family in daily life. For the working-class men, in contrast, work was basically "just a job." For some, it might be interesting or challenging (as it is for many construction workers, for example), but, even for them, it was their family life and not work that provided the basic meaning and satisfactions of life.

And central to workers' vision of their family was the constant difficulty of supporting and preserving it in an often hostile environment. Lamont's workers repeatedly described having to "fight tooth and nail" to get where they are, of constantly having to "fight for what's ours." When asked to name their heroes, many of Lamont's workers chose their own fathers because "he held the family together" during hard times.

Seen from this perspective, work was viewed in two distinct ways. On one level, it was a sacrifice, a physically exhausting, hard and sometimes dangerous sacrifice that a worker made on behalf of his family. Yet on another level, these same qualities made a worker's mastery of the difficulties and challenges of his job a tremendous source of pride and personal worth.

But while they valued work itself, blue-collar workers had a much lower opinion of ambition and success. In Lamont's interviews, workers repeatedly said that to them, money is not the most important thing in life, that the quest they see middle-class people conducting for higher status seems to them unending and to offer little satisfaction.

In fact, while these workers generally did not feel resentment toward the middle-class managers and professionals above them--saying, for example, that "I can't knock anyone for succeeding"--their view of them was far from admiring. Middle-class people were "cold, shallow"; they did not really enjoy themselves; they were "worrying all the time," sacrificing their family, "missing all of life" and living "with blinders on."

Moreover, these workers sensed both a profound snobbishness and a dishonesty among the middle-class people they encountered. They perceived middle-class people as "snotty," "snobby" and constantly ready to "look down at people." They were "two faced," "phonies," "show-offs" and willing to "screw people to get what they want."

Workers saw themselves, in contrast, as more authentic and sincere and aware of the important things in life. They placed friends and friendship above success and money; and, along with work, family and friends, they saw honesty and good character as fundamental values. They admired people who were "honest," "straightforward," "no BS," "stand-up guys," who would "be there" for someone else in times of adversity and "carry their weight" in the struggles of daily life. As a value, they saw strength of character as far more important than success.

This description of the core "values" of working Americans is startlingly different from the usual media portrayal. Yet it is the perspective that spontaneously emerges as workers simply describe the kinds of people and attitudes of which they approve or disapprove. In fact, this distinct combination of viewing work, family, friends and good character as central values in life, while according a much lower value to wealth and ambition, is instantly familiar to trade unionists and others who work directly with American workers as an accurate picture of the pattern of distinctly "working-class values" that American workers actually hold. It appears unfamiliar only because, for so long, the term "values" has been applied instead to a fixed set of conservative positions on a certain group of moral and social issues.

A significant number of American workers do in fact hold traditional or conservative views on many specific moral and social issues, but that does not make them working-class rather than middle-class values, nor are these views necessarily shared by all or even most American workers. Lamont's research, for example, shows that only 25 percent of her sample could be accurately described as deeply religious. Equally, opinion surveys have shown that the attitudes of individual blue-collar workers vary widely among different "family values" issues and that blue-collar attitudes have also become significantly more tolerant over time on a wide range of topics. Most important, Lamont's research dramatically demonstrates that the values that workers can accurately be said to share as a group--those that can properly be considered specifically "working-class values"--are not only not objectionable but are, in fact, profoundly admirable.

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