Blender Version
Broken: 4165a57a6672 (blender2.8 HEAD)
Worked: 2.79a
Short description of error
The old particle emitter render visibility was replaced by duplicator visibility. EEVEE and Cycles use that yet workbench ignores it entirely.
Exact steps for others to reproduce the error
Original file is the following. A basic plane with hair and non visible emitter:
Open the file, select the plane object and in the Object > Duplication panel disable "Display Duplicator".
The emitter should then be invisible in the viewport for workbench the same way it is for EEVEE and Cycles.