Sale-leasebacks are common and perfectly reasonable business strategies.
Generally speaking lease liabilities have a lower cost of capital than other types of debt, so making such a deal can help the company.
None of the decisions described in the post are either unusual or unreasonable from a management team trying to save a troubled company. They were just unsuccessful.
My take is that they were not there to save the company, but to extract all its assets and let it go.
By all accounts they are being made whole, and can go off and get another job.
Employees have no more of a right to sell their labor to red lobster than any other of their suppliers has a right to sell their products.
Ultimately a company exists, and should exist, solely for it's shareholders. Anything else leads to waste, grift and mismanagement.