Combining recommendations from brainreflex and iloveapplepie, as well as hours of testing. This avoids some bugs in cross versions of gearman across platforms. 
It steps though the server list and fails if all are inaccessible.
I also use the same override as "class SmartGearmanClient extends GearmanClient" for the clients.

<?php // WORKER
class SmartGearmanWorker extends GearmanWorker
{
    public $server = false;
    public function connect($servers = array( array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4730') ))
    {
        $connected = false;
        foreach ($servers as $server) {
            $c = new GearmanClient();
            $c->addServer($server['host'], $server['port'], false);
    
            if (@$c->ping('ping')) {              
                $this->addServer($server['host'], $server['port']);
                $connected=true;
                $this->server = array(
                   'host'=>$server['host'],
                   'port'=>$server['port']
                );
                break; // Remove this to use last working server in list
            }
        }
        return $connected;
    }
}

echo "Starting\n";

# Add some servers
$servers = array(
    array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4730'),
    array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4731'),
    array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4732'),
    array('host' => '127.0.0.2', 'port' => '4730'),
    array('host' => '192.168.204.10', 'port' => '4730')
);

# Create our worker object.
$gmw= new SmartGearmanWorker();

if ($gmw->connect($servers)) {
    # Register function "reverseString" with the server. 
    $gmw->addFunction("reverseString", "reverseString_fn");

    print "Connected to {$gmw->server['host']}:{$gmw->server['port']}...\n";
    print "Waiting for jobs...\n";

    while ($gmw->work()) {
        if ($gmw->returnCode() != GEARMAN_SUCCESS) {
            echo "return_code: " . $gmw->returnCode() . "\n";
            break;
        }
    }

    echo "DONE\n";
} else {
    echo "Unable to connect to any gearman-job-servers.".PHP_EOL;
};

function reverseString_fn($job)
{
    echo "Received job: " . $job->handle() . "\n";
 
    $workload = $job->workload();
    $workload_size = $job->workloadSize();

    echo "Workload: $workload ($workload_size)\n";

    # Lets send some progress information
    for ($x= 0; $x < $workload_size; $x++) {
        echo "Sending status: " . ($x + 1) . "/$workload_size complete\n";
        $job->sendStatus($x+1, $workload_size);
        $job->sendData(substr($workload, $x, 1));    
        sleep(1);
    }

    $result= strrev($workload);
    echo "Result: $result\n";

    # Return what we want to send back to the client.
    return $result;
}

Amit, kosta250

I found a workaround to avoid the dead servers and continue with rest alive. 

<?php

$servers = array(
  array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4730'), 
  array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4731'), 
  array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => '4732'), 
  array('host' => '127.0.0.2', 'port' => '4730')
);

$client= new \GearmanClient();

foreach($servers as $server) {
  $c = new \GearmanClient();
  $c->addServer($server['host'], $server['port']);

  if (@$c->ping('ping')) {
    $client->addServer($server['host'], $server['port']);
  }
}

?>

Solution:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gearmand/+bug/1118751

Sometimes you want the job server to start even if not all servers are available.  The reason is that if at a later point the server comes back gearman will use it, even if if failed during the add server operation. 

class SmartGearmanWorker extends GearmanWorker
{
    function addServer($host = '127.0.0.1', $port = 4730):bool
    {
        try {
            parent::addServer($host, $port);
            echo "\nSERVER $host WORKED";
        } catch (GearmanException $e) {
            echo "\nSERVER $host FAILED";
        }
        return true;
    }
}

class SmartGearmanClient extends GearmanClient 
{
    function addServer($host = '127.0.0.1', $port = 4730,  bool $setupExceptionHandler = false):bool
    {
        try {
            parent::addServer($host, $port, $setupExceptionHandler);
            echo "\nSERVER $host WORKED";
    } catch (GearmanException $e) {
                
            echo "\nSERVER $host FAILED"; //this does not get called even if the server is down
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Adding to Amit's comments,  I found that if the first server in the list of servers is down, then there seems to be no way to handle such a condition.

Since a few versions the port parameter is not optional anymore. I have version 1.1.1 of pecl/gearman compiled with libgearman 1.1.5, and I'm getting the following error:

send_packet(GEARMAN_COULD_NOT_CONNECT) Failed to send server-options packet -> libgearman/connection.cc:430

This happens if you don't provide a port.

Just set the second parameter to 4730 and it is working again.

Prior to version 2.0.5, addServer DOES perform socket I/O indirectly because it calls set_server_option internally for an exception handler. This means if the server is unreachable you will get a GearmanException thrown at this point, and you may want to catch and handle it in your application.

<?php

$client->addServer('127.0.0.1', 4321); // does attempt a socket connection!

?>

Starting with version 2.0.5 of the extension, a third boolean argument (after $port) may be passed false in order to prevent this from happening.

<?php

$client->addServer('127.0.0.1', 4321, false); // no socket i/o happens here

?>

The addServer and addServers are unforgiving when any of the addresses are down. I tried using exceptions, but it does not quite work. Can you provide a working example to handle a list of servers where one or more is not running.

Thanks