What you are trying seems reasonable to me. I took a look at rails_worker_proxy.rb (from the github source code). From a code read, the async_* methods accept both :arg and :args:
arg,job_key,host_info,scheduled_at,priority = arguments && arguments.values_at(:arg,:job_key,:host,:scheduled_at, :priority)
# allow both arg and args
arg ||= arguments && arguments[:args]
# ...
if worker_method =~ /^async_(\w+)/
method_name = $1
worker_options = compact(:worker => worker_name,:worker_key => worker_key,
:worker_method => method_name,:job_key => job_key, :arg => arg)
run_method(host_info,:ask_work,worker_options)
Can you share a code snippet? Have you added any debugging statements in your code and/or in the backgroundrb code itself? (I usually add a few puts statements and inspect things when things go wrong.)
Lastly, have you considered using delayed_job? It has more traction nowadays in the Rails community.