In reality, low-wage workers want to work more hours — and have a better sense of their schedule.

Along with better work-life balance to prevent burnout, shorter workweeks might increase productivity.

Microsoft, for instance, found that reducing the workweek by one day led to a 40% boost in productivity. A buzzy Wall Street Journal article last month highlighted how employees at a German company got the same amount of work done after cutting three hours in a workday.

Yet the reality for low-wage workers is that they are already being worked to optimal productivity. Scheduling algorithms, such as Kronos, use AI to devise worker shifts around when to best meet a store's demand. Companies increased use in these scheduling algorithms in the past decade, according to Adrian Haro, CEO of The Workers Lab.

The issue, however, with scheduling technology is that it gives little forewarning to hourly workers on what their daily schedules will look like. As many as 60% of hourly workers get less than two weeks' notice of changes to their schedule, according to the University of California at Berkeley's Shift Project.

Schneider, a researcher at the Shift Project, says hourly employees want to work more hours outside of just what these algorithms decide for them.

"The problem is, we do see people working a less-than-40-hour week, but they don't like it. They want more hours because they're paid hourly and not very much," Schneider told Business Insider. "For these workers, there's a clear time-money trade-off."