Acting to help California’s working families, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. on Wednesday signed AB 10 by Assemblymember Luis Alejo (D-Salinas), which will raise the minimum wage in California from $8.00 per hour to $10 per hour.

“It’s a special day to stand with workers who are laboring for all of us and laboring at a very low wage. Turning that wage into a $10 an hour wage is a wonderful thing,” said Gov. Brown prior to signing AB 10 in Los Angeles.

“It’s my goal and it’s my moral responsibility to do what I can to make our society more harmonious, to make our social fabric tighter and closer and to work toward a solidarity that every day appears to become more distant,” Brown said.

AB 10 will raise California’s minimum wage in two one-dollar increments, from $8 per hour today to $9 per hour, effective July 1, 2014, and from $9 per hour to $10 per hour, effective Jan. 1, 2016.

Gov. Brown worked with the bill’s author and legislative leaders over the past month to secure passage of AB 10.

He was joined at the bill signing ceremonies in Los Angeles and Oakland by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, Assemblymember Luis Alejo, and dozens of workers.