Alan Schwarz rounds up the major changes to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), although I'm still not sure about limits to free agents negotiating with the same team:

Some changes have been made to the draft-pick compensation afforded teams which lose major league free agents. Type C free agents have been eliminated, while teams that lose Type B free agents, which had previously received a second-round pick from the signing club, will now get a sandwich pick between the first and second rounds. (This was pursued by the union to remove the disincentive for teams to sign those players.) Those changes go into effect immediately.

The number of players deemed Type A and B has been tweaked as well. Type A free agents, whose former team continue to receive a first- or second-round pick from the signing club as well as an extra pick between the first and second rounds, will be reduced from the 30 percent of players (as determined by a statistical formula) to 20; the Type B band is reduced from 31-50 percent to 21-40.

These changes will take effect next offseason, allowing clubs which lose free agents this winter the same compensation they had always expected. Teams must still offer players salary arbitration to receive draft-pick compensation, though the deadline for that offer was moved up from Dec. 7 to Dec. 1.

So fewer players are eligible for compensation. This post says the arbitration date is eliminated, but Schwarz says the date's been changed. I'm still wondering if they eliminated the "if you don't sign with your team by a certain date, you can't sign until May 1."

The amateur draft changes are interesting, too. They're designed to dampen the growth in high pick player bonuses without putting a set price on the bonus. A team that fails to sign a high pick gets a similar pick the next year.

Teams that fail to sign a first-round pick no longer receive an extra pick after the first round as compensation, but instead a virtually identical pick the following year; for example, a team that fails to sign the No. 5 pick one year will receive the No. 6 pick the next, rather than one in the 30s or 40s. The same compensation also now exists for unsigned second-round picks, while a team that fails to sign a third-round pick will receive a sandwich pick between the third and fourth rounds.

The new system should decrease the growth of bonus payments to amateurs, as teams can walk away from negotiations with the reassurance of having a similar pick the next year. (Although that compensation pick, if unsigned, is not subject to compensation, which keeps clubs from using it over and over.) Clubs have for years wanted a system of prescribed, slotted bonuses for every high pick but learned early in the negotiations that the union would not accept it, so instead focused on stronger compensation rules.

I don't think the union gave up much here. Like everything in baseball, the bonus amount is driven by the amount of money available to teams. As long as revenue keeps rising, bonuses will keep rising. It is good that teams trying to rebuild through the draft get better compensated if a pick simply doesn't wish to sign with that team. In the long run, this should improve competitive balance.