Hey Anton,
thanks for your post. I had the same issue and tried to change it for GLOBAL, SESSION and DEFAULT. WIth root I managed to change the GLOBAL_VALUE only, but not the other two. It works with the new setting but I still wonder if you managed to remove the STRICT_TRANS_TABLES from all the Columns (SESSION_VALUE, GLOBAL_VALUE and DEFAULT_VALUE).
The problem is, that a restart of the DB changes the values to the values saved in DEFAULT_VALUE. Therefore the fix is lost.
Best,
Tomasz