[purjolok]

Indeed, calling the fact not paying an employee's a type of theft seems to be an originally English idiom¹. In other languages it's more akin to an unpaid debt or a breach contract rather than stolen property. Intuitively, to have something stolen one needs to have gained ownership of it in the first place. (And being owed something is not the same as owning it.)

P.S.: What's with the hashes?

¹. It seems to also be used in Spanish, but mostly in an American context as a calque from English.