Companies certainly do have a duty to shareholders. That's absolutely true and breaches in duty should be taken seriously. A common issue where this responsibility needs to be better policed is lopsided risk decisions where in many cases executives can make large bonuses and on rare occasions they don't make a bonus while shareholders lose big - a complicated mess of scheming and tricky incentives that can in extreme cases amount to theft. This is the main type of abuse that these legal duties are meant to prevent. They do so imperfectly, but that's a different discussion.
"This company pays a fair wage and maintains a high standard of labour conditions. These are core values of this company and an important part of how we do business."
The above statement is completely legitimate position for a company to take and absolutely does not count as wasting shareholder money.* These are not new legal concepts. They have many years of legislation and litigation behind them.