Since version 2.5 of the Pipeline Nodes and Processes Plugin (a component of the Pipeline plugin, installed by default), the WORKSPACE
environment variable is available again. This version was released on 2016-09-23, so it should be available on all up-to-date Jenkins instances.
Example
node('label'){
// now you are on slave labeled with 'label'
def workspace = WORKSPACE
// ${workspace} will now contain an absolute path to job workspace on slave
workspace = env.WORKSPACE
// ${workspace} will still contain an absolute path to job workspace on slave
// When using a GString at least later Jenkins versions could only handle the env.WORKSPACE variant:
echo "Current workspace is ${env.WORKSPACE}"
// the current Jenkins instances will support the short syntax, too:
echo "Current workspace is $WORKSPACE"
}