Depends on who you talk to, as it probably does at every airline. The true colors of this company are shown when you spend an extended period of time on reserve. Our reserve section of the contract is the weakest part, and there is essentially nothing in there to prevent the company from doing basically whatever they want with you for the entire reserve sequence. You will start out with a day trip or a 2 day, and it will always end up a 5 day with a DH back to base getting in as late as possible. Or so it has been in my experience. That, and you can almost always count on being junior manned. It can be your last day of reserve, and they will not release you because they want to keep you available for a junior man the next day. Since you're obligated to answer your phone, and we're on call for 15 hours out of the day, it's a huge convenience for them to keep us on call. I was junior manned at least 3 times last month, all of which I had to answer the phone since I was on call. We are limited to 10 junior mans a year, but it's still a joke. They assume that if they have you on the phone, no matter what the circumstance you are available. I have refused them in the past, but they will **** and moan and threaten you like you are single handily causing the downfall of the company.
With that being said, once you do get a line, things improve dramatically. Although I live in base and commutable lines don't matter to me. I hear that the lines have gotten pretty bad for commuters with the opening of RDU and LGA bases. Before that, I was a junior line holder in PHL and could generally get a commutable line on both ends.
As far as the junior base, I'm not sure what that is anymore. It used to be LGA, but now I hear that they have the most commutable lines, and I think it went fairly senior. RDU is the most senior base. I've been here 3 years and am still on reserve there.