If you decide to take the business class ticket, you are treated 100% like a normal passenger and have not "special" upgrade privileges. However, you do accumulate a very large number of frequent flier miles so you very well could upgrade using your elite status and/or frequent flier miles. Some guys also used them for tickets and pocket the $2000 cash for the month.
There are a few different groups at the company. The largest is the foreign contract pilots. There are also some Japanese pilots that are here on contracts too. They came from other airlines in Japan. Most are captains, but there are maybe 2 or 3 FOs I think. The next groups is "career" over 60 captains from ANA. There might be around 10 to 15 of those and all are pretty good guys. Then there are the management pilots. Those are the guys that are assigned to the company from ANA and are active ANA pilots. Maybe about 10 of those.