Separating IRM Full Control from Excel Worksheet Protection

We've developed several excel workbooks that leverage VBA macros with workbook structure and worksheet password protections to maintain standards.  The VBA macros unlock workbook/sheet protections to perform tasks and relock on completion.  Our executive management has tasked us to protect the workbooks to prevent unauthorized access so we have applied a sensitivity label to restrict access to an AD group (Project Managers). However, short of granting Full Control, the IRM prevents the macros from removing sheet/book protections.  We have tried to allow permissions for OBJMODEL and DOCEDIT already at Copilot's recommendation but this was unsuccessful. We don't want to grant full control because users are then able to remove the document label.

Any suggestions for how to grant workbook/sheet protection permission without allowing users to remove labels? At this time the best we've come up with is to grant the full access but require an explanation for a label downgrade with an alert to the admin/document owner.