Prison doesn’t scare me, but how do I tell my young son?

Transit union boss talks emotionally to The News on eve of his 10 days in jail

Transit union chief Roger Toussaint says he’s not scared of what awaits him when he marches off to jail today — he just worries that his 10 days behind bars will mean 10 days of fear for his family.

“That would be my biggest concern — that my loved ones would worry about me more than they should, more than they need to,” Toussaint told the Daily News yesterday.

As president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, Toussaint led the illegal three-day December strike that crippled the city and brought massive financial penalties for the union.

Now he’s getting ready to pay a personal price — one that he says will take its greatest toll on his family, especially the youngest of his five children, 10-year-old Tano.

“He asked me whether I’ll be okay. I gave him assurances that I’ll be fine, that his father will not be at risk. But he is a 10-year-old boy,” said Toussaint, 49. “He’s very aware of what’s going on.”

“I understand,” the boy told his father last night.

Before leaving for jail, Toussaint said he will talk with all of his children, including a son who is serving in the Navy. He’ll say goodbye to his wife, Donna, and spend his final moments with Tano, named for an African river.

Then Toussaint will walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to the lower Manhattan jailhouse known as the Tombs this afternoon, cheered on by what he hopes will be a crowd of thousands of union members.

He also hopes his stint in the slammer will rally New Yorkers worried about keeping their pensions and health benefits — and will pressure the MTA to adopt a contract with the union when the agency meets Wednesday.

The MTA pushed for a jail term, millions of dollar in fines and revocation of the union’s automatic dues deductions from workers’ paychecks. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones granted all three.

“This is an attempt to subject the union to a public flogging in order to intimidate everyone from standing up,” Toussaint said. “It’s going to backfire. People see that we have a right to fight to defend pensions and health benefits that go along with hard work.”

After going back to work, a deal that preserved the current pension plan and the retirement age at 55 — but called for worker contributions to health care benefits — was struck.

The 33,700-member work force rejected the pact by seven votes. Even after workers soundly ratified the contract in a revote last week, the MTA says it wants a different deal and has pushed the dispute into binding arbitration.

Toussaint was the only TWU leader sentenced to jail. He said he didn’t appeal the sentence in hopes that the judge would impose a lighter financial penalty on the union — to no avail.

He will have plenty of support as he heads to the Tombs — politicians and union officials are lining up to speak on his behalf. The Rev. Al Sharpton plans an all-night vigil outside the jail.

Inside jail, though, Toussaint will be just another prisoner. In a wing with other nonviolent offenders, he’ll have his own 7-by-11-foot cell and he’ll be allowed to wear his own clothing.

But he’ll have to live on the jail’s schedule of 5 a.m. wakeups and 11 p.m. lockdowns, as well as random searches and jailhouse food — like the hot dogs and baked beans that await him at lunch tomorrow.

Toussaint said he’s not sure if he’ll be able to take anything with him to jail. But if he is allowed reading material, he said he would bring a book on James Connolly, founder of the Irish Transport Workers Union and leader of the 1916 rebellion that led to Southern Ireland’s independence from England.

“His followers founded our union,” Toussaint said.

Toussaint learned his own militancy during unrest in his native Trinidad, and says after living in Crown Heights and East Flatbush during their most crime-ridden days, the ex-subway track worker is not worried about his safety behind bars.

“I’ve been through a lot more than what I’m going to face in the next 10 days,” Toussaint said. “I’ve been in situations where my personal safety and my life were at risk in a number of ways. I’m accustomed to dealing with threats on my safety.”

Even though he said his wife supports what he’s doing — “she’s more concerned about outside attempts to tear me down, rather than the risks of jail” — he acknowledged that his looming imprisonment will cause some pain.

“The contact with my family,” Toussaint said, “that’s the main thing I’ll be deprived of.”