Female credit union employees in California may soon get raises after Gov. Jerry Brown signs new legislation requiring employers to pay men and women equally for “substantially similar” work.

Senate bill 358, which cleared the state legislature on Aug. 31 and now awaits Brown’s signature, would take effect on Jan. 1. Brown’s office said publicly he will sign the potentially widely influential bill.

Current California law and the federal Equal Pay Act require equal pay for equal work, but the new law requires equal pay for “substantially similar work, when viewed as a composite of skill, effort and responsibility, and performed under similar working conditions,” according to a labor and employment alert by law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

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