(maine) Owner Of A Franchise Doesn’t Pay Overtime.

In short, my boss/owner owns about 25 different stores all under the same fast food franchise. A lot of his stores are understaffed, especially in my current district. Because of that, a lot of workers get sent around to other stores in neighboring towns when they need extra hands. But when we work at those other stores, we get a separate paycheck. We can’t clock in at the other stores because our numbers only work at our own, but they’ll put us in their system or whatever and we do still get paid for working in another store, but we get a different paycheck. So no overtime, because its on another payroll. This upcoming year, i’m going to have 3 different W2’s, because at the beginning of the year i was idiotically going and working at these other stores until i realized i wasnt getting overtime and i was not going to get overtime. Is this legal? Is he allowed to not pay us overtime because theyre technically separate locations even though they are all the same fast food restaurants? I didnt think a whole lot of it until my dad said something like “i dunno that sounds sheisty, i dont think thats totally legal” and now he has me thinking more about the situation.