Talks aimed at heading off fresh postal strikes have been adjourned and will resume today.

Leaders of the Communication Workers Union met with Royal Mail bosses for seven hours at the headquarters of the TUC in London, yesterday.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said neither side would be making any comment after the meeting.

Mr Barber said: "The Communication Workers Union and the Royal Mail have been meeting... at the TUC to discuss all the issues involved in the current dispute. We have had useful discussions... and the talks are being adjourned to allow further work to be done overnight on some of the issues involved."

Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the union, said as he arrived for the talks that ministers could not continue "sitting on the sidelines".

Mr Ward said the dispute was "fundamentally" about jobs and workers' terms and conditions. "The change that postal workers are facing is on a scale that's greater than any other UK industry at the present time and I think what we are going to do... is end that confusion about what this dispute is about," he said.

He said the issue of the Royal Mail's pension deficit - which totals about £10 billion - needed to be resolved urgently. "There's no prospect of us building a successful future for the Royal Mail and for the workforce unless the government actually deal with that issue," he said. "That's why we keep saying the government can't keep sitting on the sidelines."

Royal Mail said the volume of delayed mail caused by last week's strikes by the CWU is expected to have fallen to five million items by the end, yesterday. The company said 30 million items had been delayed by two 24-hour walkouts on Thursday and Friday, but employees returned to work on Saturday and started tackling the backlog.

Up to 120,000 CWU members are set to stage three further 24-hour strikes from Thursday unless the deadlocked row is resolved at the TUC talks.