parallel treats input as a single token

[John]

I have a bash script that expects three tokens that I'd like to push through 
parallel.  The problem I am experiencing is that when I cat a text file and 
pipe it into parallel, the spaces in the tokens are not treated as such; they 
are treated as a single token.

Here is a simplified script: ~/bin/action
#!/bin/bash
echo "first = $1"

echo "second = $2"
echo "third = $3"

If I simply run it like so, I get the expected output:

% ~/bin/action a b c
first = a

second = b
third = c

So to use parallel, I place the "a b c" into a text file that I cat and pipe 
into parallel but all of the tokens become $1 as you can see:

% echo "a b c" > worklist
% cat worklist | parallel ~/bin/action
defined(@array) is deprecated at /usr/bin/parallel line 211.
(Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)
first = a b c
second = 
third = 

1) Please help me understand the error of my way.
2) Why am I experiencing the error regarding defined arrays at line 211?