CARE home workers should be paid the living wage, according to the organisation representing their bosses.
But Scottish Care, the umbrella group for private care home owners, said councils should fund the sector better in order to let them do it.
Without additional funding, care homes will struggle to recruit and keep staff and standards of care will suffer, Scottish Care's annual conference will be told.
Ranald Mair, the organisation's chief executive, said workers could earn more stacking supermarket shelves in some parts of the country than they can working in a care home.
Delegates at the event in Glasgow today include Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Alex Neil.
The conference coincides with a meeting of local authority leaders in Edinburgh who are considering funding options for the sector today.
Mr Mair said: "This is a moral issue because there is an obvious lack of consistency if the Scottish Government advocates the living wage and public authorities pay it to their own care home staff, but are not prepared to fund the care that is delivered on their behalf by voluntary and private providers at a level that allows those organisations to do likewise."
He added that council-run care homes cost on average £270 per place per week more than places purchased from private and voluntary providers. Funding care in the private sector by just £30 a week more would enable companies to pay the living wage and still cost much less than council provision, he claimed.
Mr Mair said: "There are no local councils who pay their care workers in care homes less than the living wage. Private and voluntary sector care homes regularly lose staff they have recruited and trained to local councils because they offer better pay and conditions. We need a level playing field. "
A spokesman for Cosla, the local authority umbrella group, accused Scottish Care of publicity-seeking. "It is very disappointing that they have chosen to do so ahead of council leaders considering the issue," he said.
"It is up to the private sector what they pay their workforce not us."
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