What my friend at United wrote in his blog http://renewedpilot.com/2016/02/04/l...or-the-winter/ was this:

"Our contract has very specific rules about deadheading. For a deadhead to a layover, the scheduler must confirm the reservation in the following order based on availability: aisle, window, middle seat.

If we are forced to sit in a middle seat, we earn 1.5x pay for that segment."

and he said this:

"Our contract states that if we deadhead to a working assignment, we must be booked in first class if available at the time of ticketing."

Sounds kinda nice...