San Francisco, California adopts landmark minimum wage of $10/hour

The city of San Francisco in California will usher in a landmark move with a $10 minimum wage starting January 1, 2012, making it the first city in the United States paying such amount, the Asian Journal said.   A report published on its website on Wednesday said the change “is a result of a proposition that was passed in 2003 that requires the city to increase the minimum wage each year, using a formula tied to inflation and cost of living.”    The increase in minimum wage will bring the hourly wage in the city at $10.24 for “lowest-paid workers,” which is more than $2 above the minimum wage in the state of California and nearly $3 more than that of the country, the report added.   However, the Asian Journal said most employees in San Francisco see that “it’s still not a wage to live on.”   The 2010 US Census, released in the middle of this year, showed that 1.19 million Filipinos—or majority of the total of more than 2.5 million—are in California, constituting 3.2 percent of its population.    Meanwhile, on its website, the San Francisco Filipino American Chamber of Commerce said as of 2009, “roughly 400, 000—or slightly less than half of the Filipino population in California—reside in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area.” - VVP, GMA News