They probably have a lot of loans underwritten by stock, so they need their stock price to stay at certain numbers or else their credit rating gets worse and they have to pay more to service their debt.

Unless you are a car company that takes pre-orders, people only pay for cars after they are made. So you either need to hoard cash or take on debt in order to maintain consistent cash flow.

Issuing and buying back shares is a pretty common way to handle cash flow and is really a separate issue to living wages and employee compensation.