The $184K is net profit, so each employee's salary is already counted. Another way of thinking about it: every Apple employee can get a $180K salary increase and they'd still make money.
A better interpretation would be: if the employees owned the company, they'd (effectively) get that much more per year. Instead, shareholders own the company so that money is (effectively) given in equity to the shareholders each year.
At the least, the shareholders hold the cash hostage. They are among the first to be paid out in event of a liquidation.
Perhaps a better question is, how are shareholders not a cost?
Dividends are a cost to the organization. They are resources that will never be recovered. However, from the point of view of the shareholder it is personal income. If dividends are not a cost to the organization, what are they?
Dividends are the distribution of a part of the profit (or maybe retained earnings, if the current earnings are not enough) to shareholders. Profit is what is left from revenue after costs. Unless you want to redefine the basic accounting terms, dividends cannot be a cost.
[1] http://www.space.com/21983-black-hole-rips-and-whips-galacti...
Was just an example of a positive "yes" answer to your question.
It's not a zero-sum game. Apple creates value, it doesn't just move it from one place to another.
I'm sure you wouldn't claim that it's possible for the employees to create the value without the assets owned by Apple. Does the Apple employees have the savings to pay the $100M bill from TSMC, when a new generation of SOCs need to be produced? They would certainly all have to work from home, because they wouldn't have a building they could all sit in, without using the property of Apple.
Seems to me like Apple and its employees are in a symbiotic relationship, that benefits both parties.