Detroit Project Enlightened Backdrop for Jobs Summit : Economy: Clinton’s international conference could take cue from bold urban experiment in industrial renaissance.

When the finance ministers of the world’s richest nations gather here Monday for an international summit on job creation, this tough-fisted city will provide a stark urban backdrop. Once the symbol of America’s manufacturing might, it now stands as a metaphor for industrial decay.

But the ministers’ view of Detroit might soften if they travel to where Rosa Parks and Oakman boulevards intersect. Scarred by vacant lots, boarded-up stores and decrepit housing, this downtrodden Northwest neighborhood is home to a bold experiment in industrial renaissance.

A row of abandoned factories--once occupied by the likes of Ford Motor Co., Massey-Ferguson Ltd. and Ex-Cell-O Corp.--has been transformed into a bustling job training and manufacturing enterprise.

Operated by Focus:Hope, a grass-roots civil rights group, the project offers mostly minorities and women supplemental high school instruction and training on precision machine tools.

But its most ambitious effort is the Center for Advanced Technologies, a $100-million factory of the future equipped with state-of-the-art machinery that churns out parts for auto makers and other contractors. President Clinton is scheduled to visit the center Sunday, on the eve of an international conference he called to focus on job creation and job training in industrialized nations.

The Focus:Hope program is drawing national attention--and the help of some of Detroit’s biggest names, including former GM president Lloyd Reuss, who is dean of the high-tech training center. Industry and government experts say the program could become a model of how to train young people for manufacturing jobs, which increasingly require a high level of math, computer and technical skills.

“They have proven this can work, even in an inner-city community abandoned by industry,” said Barry Stern, a former deputy assistant secretary of vocational and adult education in the U.S. Department of Education and now a job-training consultant in Los Angeles.

CAT students--the best and the brightest from Focus:Hope’s other programs--work toward engineering degrees while laboring as paid apprentices on the factory floor under the watchful eye of veteran engineers and industry mentors. Besides learning to operate, maintain and program sophisticated machine tools, they take courses in applied engineering, advanced mathematics, computer-aided manufacturing and even Japanese.

“We are creating the high-skilled worker of the 21st Century,” said Father William Cunningham, a rabble-rousing Roman Catholic priest who is the director and driving force of Focus:Hope.

One of those workers-to-be is Marvin Taylor. The 31-year-old Detroit native entered CAT with the hope of obtaining skills that will mean future job security. Already, he is gaining the kind of daily work experience on computerized machine tools that most engineering students do not receive in college.

“We are getting hands-on application of theory,” said Taylor, who held several low-skill jobs in the auto repair business before personal problems left him jobless.

There are some skeptics. Focus:Hope, they say, is too narrowly focused on manufacturing, a shrinking sector of the economy. They also complain that it soaks up a great deal of money from government and private sources while benefiting only the most able of the disadvantaged, not the hard-core unemployed.

“This has to be done on a wider scale across all skill levels,” said Willie Walker, director of Detroit’s Department of Employment and Training.

Still any help is welcome in a city that has lost much of its manufacturing base in recent decades. Today, job choices for Detroit’s low-skilled youngsters often are between flipping hamburgers or selling drugs.

The loss of jobs began in Detroit even before the devastating 1967 riots but intensified with the white flight that followed. The manufacturing sector was depleted further in the early 1980s, when the nation’s economy slumped and competition from more efficient overseas producers intensified.

Now the unemployment rate in Detroit is about 12%, nearly double that of the nation. If people who have abandoned the search for jobs are included, the rate jumps to more than 20%. Joblessness is double that again for black youths and in some neighborhoods.

“The failure of public education, particularly in cities like Detroit and Chicago, has consigned a total generation to lower skills than their parents for the first time in U.S. history,” said David Littman, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Detroit. “In an era of global competition, this is a fatal error.”

Yet efforts to attract new jobs to Detroit or to train workers for jobs largely have failed, despite the expenditure of millions of government dollars. Often, experts say, workers are trained for jobs that do not exist--or else the training does not meet employers’ needs and standards.

“Successful training requires a coalition between the trainers and providers,” said Malcolm Cohen, an associate research scientist with the University of Michigan’s Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Focus:Hope--whose operations span 33 acres and include a food bank, day care center, Montessori school and four small manufacturing plants--slowly has built just such a job-training partnership.

It has been a rocky road. Created in 1968, Focus:Hope often took on the local power structure with lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. While still committed to racial harmony, the organization has moved its focus from courtrooms to boardrooms.

“We reached the very pragmatic conclusion that we would gain more by training people for good, high-skill jobs rather than suing some business for hiring discrimination,” said Cunningham, 64, who is as much at home talking about total quality management as he is discussing Scripture.

The result is most visible at CAT, a former Ford engine plant now dedicated to stretching the envelope of engineering education.

The facility was refurbished using $55 million in federal and private grants. Operations are supported by the Big Three auto makers, the state of Michigan, the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department.

The CAT plant, which began operation last fall, is filled with Star Trek-like features. The factory floor is a startling bright apple-green; doors are opened by a coded hand-identification system; classes are held in three-story “power towers” that overlook the machinery; a natural gas cogeneration system produces electricity and uses waste energy to heat the plant’s air and water.

The 180,000-square-foot plant was designed to excite the imagination of the youngsters who visit and use it. “The faculty that we want to nurture today is imagination,” Cunningham said.

Students can earn a three-year associate degree, four-year bachelor’s degree or six-year master’s degree in engineering from one of six participating universities, including the University of Michigan and Lehigh University. The program is designed to mimic actual work situations, so students work eight-hour days on real production contracts. They are paid $7.50 an hour. Any profits are used to defray program costs.

Currently, CAT has a $2-million contract to make pulleys for Detroit Diesel, a manufacturer of heavy-duty truck engines. “We are a just-in-time supplier for Detroit Diesel,” said Marty Niezgoda, who with other students works a metal-cutting machine set to tolerances of one-thousandth of an inch. “If there is a problem, we hear about it quickly.”

The center is now gearing up for a $3-million contract to provide aluminum intake manifolds to Ford for its 1995 Windstar minivan. The manifold also will be used in new models of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable.

“We treat Focus:Hope just like any other supplier,” said Ron Soukup, a Ford purchasing specialist. “They have to make a bid and compete on pricing like anyone else.”

When not working in the factory, the students receive instruction from faculty and tutoring from industry mentors. The academic curriculum is developed by the universities and experts from auto and machine tool companies and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

“We are breaking new ground here,” said Reuss, who joined Focus:Hope as a volunteer after being fired in a boardroom shake-up at GM in 1992. “Our focus is not only on the acquisition of knowledge, but the application of that knowledge.”

About 30 students are attending CAT; eventually, up to 150 will be enrolled each year.

The candidates are largely drawn from Focus:Hope’s machinist training program. It began in 1981 after extensive study showed a severe shortage of skilled machinists in Detroit, said Eleanor Josaitis, the program’s assistant director.

“Our mission statement calls for practical action,” she said. “This was seen as practical and intelligent.”

Trainees spend half their time learning to operate mills, lathes and grinders and half in math, computer and other classes. About two-thirds complete the program. More than 900 students have graduated, and all have been placed in jobs that generally offer a starting wage of about $7.50 an hour.

Erick Davis, 28, entered the program after being on the welfare rolls for nearly a year. A Detroit native, he joined the Marines, but was discharged in the military downsizing at the end of the Cold War.

“What attracted me to this program was the security that a skill offers,” said Davis, a single father who lives with his mother and 6-year-old son. He has already been offered a job as a machinist technician by a local shop.

No figures are available on how long graduates stay employed. Focus:Hope officials estimate that only 10% to 15% leave their jobs.

But the failure rate may be higher. John Gruder, owner of Phoenix Die Mold, has hired about 10 Focus:Hope trainees and has let three go. Their training had some “shortcomings,” he said. Still he is generally pleased with the quality of Focus:Hope graduates--particularly their strong work ethic.

While the center is drawing kudos, even its biggest supporters note that the program’s impact is limited.

For instance, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a key backer, acknowledged that Focus:Hope may be difficult to copy because it takes years to develop the trust and relationships that make such efforts succeed. Stern, who helped Los Angeles County apply for federal support for a program modeled on Focus:Hope, said it remains to be seen if the Detroit program can wean itself from federal money.

“The question is: Can they sustain it long term and without federal aid?” he said. “That chapter has yet to be written.”

Cunningham, however, has no doubts about Focus:Hope’s sustainability. The priest has little patience for those who urge caution and criticizes past job training programs, saying billions of dollars have been wasted on efforts that brought no jobs--or offered only dead-end work.

After more than 25 years working with the disadvantaged, he still has the fervor of a zealot. But he is preaching a new sermon. Cunningham says Detroit and the United States can only regain their competitive edge by adopting new ideas and technologies and taking advantage of the nation’s diversity.

“Our goals are too limited, our focus is too narrow,” said Cunningham. “What about helping people to be productive to the extent of their capability? Then, we would have an economy.”