I am adding this as an addition to the answer but reply was too short.
I have been able to do the Gearman workers as a CakePHP console and wrap it around a supervisord config
// Add the example configs below
[program:my-gearman-test]
command= /path/to/cakephp/app/Console/cake gearman test
process_name= %(process_num)g-gearman-test
numprocs=1
directory=/path/to/cakephp/app
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=www-data
stdout_logfile=/path/to/logs/worker_stdout.log
stdout_logfile_maxbytes=1MB
stderr_logfile=/path/to/logs/worker_stderr.log
stderr_logfile_maxbytes=1MB
Then I run supervisord, and it will start initializing the Cake console command. Now with the worker part of the CakePHP framework, I get all the goodness that comes from using a framework instead of doing a standalone worker.php script